Oral Answers to Questions

TRADE AND INDUSTRY

The Secretary of State was asked—

World Trade Organisation

Stephen Pound: What action she is taking to make the Doha trade round benefit developing countries.

Patricia Hewitt: May I begin by wishing you a very happy birthday, Mr. Speaker? It is an especially good week to celebrate being fifty-something.
	We are determined to make the Doha round work, especially in the interests of developing countries. That is why I visited Thailand, India and South Africa in the past year for discussions with other Trade Ministers. I shall visit central America with Christian Aid in September on my way to Cancun. If we could halve protectionism and trade barriers globally, we could cut the number of people in the developing world who live in poverty by more than 300 million by 2015. That would be a significant contribution towards achieving the millennium development goals.

Stephen Pound: May I add my congratulations to those of my right hon. Friend to you on your birthday, Mr. Speaker, and perhaps dare to draw hon. Members' attention to the fact that it is also my birthday today? That is a happy congruence, which my parents arranged as a tribute to you, with great prescience.
	I thank the Secretary of State for her answer. Has she assessed last week's statement on common agricultural policy reform, especially its implications for the new trade round?

Patricia Hewitt: I am delighted by the big step forward that we took in the European Agriculture Council last week. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Our initial assessment of last week's agreement shows that it will enable the European Union to accept—indeed, to better—the proposal in Stuart Harbinson's paper for reductions in agricultural subsidies. There is much else to be done, not least by the United States, but last week's deal in the Agriculture Council removes one of the biggest barriers on the road to Cancun.

Michael Fabricant: But is not the reality that, although the CAP improvements are welcome, they will not happen until 2013? They do not include any changes to the sugar regime. Does the Secretary of State accept that subsidies are a menace, not only through the CAP but through the United States, which she mentioned? Will she use her best endeavours tomorrow, the next day and the day after that to speak to the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and persuade the Department to ensure the removal of all such subsidies?

Patricia Hewitt: I welcome the hon. Gentleman to the Dispatch Box. I know that, before he became a Member of Parliament, he spent considerable time working in eastern and southern Africa and that he is committed to the agenda that I described.
	The British Government have led the way and argued successfully for reform of the CAP. We have made considerably more progress than the Conservatives when they were in government. We are leading the charge against the sugar subsidies, which will be discussed in Europe later this year, because they are disastrous for some of the poorest countries, including Mozambique.
	The Conservative party, especially its leader, has experienced a welcome conversion to the cause of free and fair trade. However, let me remind Opposition Members of their record when they were in government and could have done something about the matter. They were behind the intellectual property agreement that did nothing—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The Secretary of State has been very nice to me this morning, but I have to stop her.

Claire Ward: Last week, like many other hon. Members, I participated in the lobbies of the Trade Justice Movement. My constituents raised their anxieties that a World Trade Organisation agreement on investment might harm developing countries. Does my right hon. Friend share those concerns? If so, what does she intend to do about it?

Patricia Hewitt: The new issues we are discussing—which include investment, but also such matters as trade facilitation and Government procurement—are on the agenda because it is clear that developing countries need more investment, and that a multilateral agreement on investment could help to remove some of the barriers that result in those countries' receiving no foreign direct investment. As I made clear last week, no decisions have yet been made on the structure or content of an agreement. We will review progress in Cancun in September, and we in the United Kingdom Government will not sign up to anything that is not in the interests of the developing countries overall.

Vincent Cable: Will the Secretary of State join me in condemning the complacent and arrogant attitude of the European Union's trade negotiators, Mr. Lamy and Mr. Fischler, who have dismissed the possibility of any early move to improve market access to, for instance, sugar as "unilateral disarmament"? Does that not either represent the most primitive kind of protectionist economic thinking, or suggest that the negotiators are being unduly influenced by agricultural lobbies in Europe? In either event, should they not be fired?

Patricia Hewitt: I normally find myself agreeing with the hon. Gentleman about trade issues, but I think that he is quite wrong in this instance. Pascal Lamy played a crucial role in securing the launch of the Doha development round, and Commissioner Fischler has played an outstanding role. Had it not been for his persistence, I do not think that we would have secured agreement on the reforms in the Agriculture Council last week. In the European Union—again, on the initiative of Commissioner Lamy—we agreed the everything but arms initiative specifically to help the least developed countries.
	There is a huge job to be done in dismantling our sugar subsidies. That must be discussed and agreed in the European Union later this year; but I think that the agreement that we reached in the Agriculture Council last week makes agreement on dismantling these absurd subsidies more likely.

Sandra Osborne: Does my right hon. Friend agree that many developing countries share the anxieties of the Trade Justice Movement about any extension of the agenda to include investment? What action will she take to ensure that they have their say in the negotiations?

Patricia Hewitt: The developing countries constitute the majority of the membership of the World Trade Organisation, and nothing can be agreed in the round unless everyone is signed up to the package. Let me make it clear, however, that neither for the developing countries nor for us and the other developed countries are these new issues the first priority. The first priority is to obtain an agreement with the United States Government on trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights—TRIPS—and access to medicines. The second priority is to secure agreement on the appalling, trade-distorting agricultural subsidies; we helped enormously with that last week. We must then proceed to secure other forms of market access that will, above all, be good for developing countries.

Chris Grayling: What action she is taking to meet the obligations agreed by the Government at Doha in 2001.

Mike O'Brien: Trade rules must be reformed to benefit the poor. The Government have worked hard to ensure that the changes in WTO rules being negotiated in the Doha round will benefit developing countries. The recent very positive outcome of the discussions on CAP reform in the EU Agriculture Council should now act as a catalyst for other WTO members, like the US, to liberalise their markets.

Chris Grayling: Like the hon. Member for Watford (Claire Ward), I had meetings with the Trade Justice Movement last week in Ewell and Ashtead in my constituency. The movement is hugely frustrated by the fact that while a process is under way to require the opening of markets in the developing world, the process of opening markets properly in the developed world is progressing at a snail's pace. The movement wants action. When can the Minister deliver that action, on a short time scale?

Mike O'Brien: Obviously those issues must be negotiated at Cancun. That is why we are having a meeting in September; they are part of the wider Doha round. The whole process of the negotiation is aimed at securing changes that will benefit not only the developing countries but the developed world. If we can reduce our trade barriers by 50 per cent., we will benefit world trade by creating $150 billion of extra trade in the world. That will have to happen over time, but happen it must.

Anne Campbell: I welcome my hon. Friend to his new position on the Front Bench. I also welcome the Government's attitude to the WTO round, as did my constituents when they came to see me at the lobby last week. Does he agree that besides pressing for good governance for developing countries, we should also press for companies that provide international investment to take on board the best guidelines for corporate social responsibility, which I know the Secretary of State has been especially keen on?

Mike O'Brien: I certainly agree that corporate social responsibility is vital. We need to ensure that our own companies in this country, in particular, recognise that when they invest in developing countries we expect them to adopt the highest standards in their treatment of both their workers and the environment.

Community Pharmacies

Peter Luff: When she expects to bring forward proposals in response to the Office of Fair Trading report on community pharmacies; and if she will make a statement.

Gerry Sutcliffe: First, I wish you, Mr. Speaker, and my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Pound), a happy birthday.
	In respect of the OFT report as it relates to England, the Government have stated clearly that we will introduce a balanced package of proposals before the summer recess that will promote change to open up the market and improve quality and access without diminishing the crucial role that pharmacies play, especially in poorer and rural areas. In coming to conclusions, we are considering not only consumer and competition issues in pharmacy but wider health policy objectives, such as the role of pharmacists in delivering NHS objectives, and how we can improve access for patients to high-quality pharmaceutical services.

Peter Luff: I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his new position. It gives me great pleasure, as I consider him a decent, honourable and thoughtful man. We had many dealings together as Treasury Whips, and I hope that the same spirit of cordiality will characterise our exchange today—but I have two words of advice for him as a new Minister. First, he should take his time. These petitions that we are all getting—such as the ones from the Moss pharmacy in Droitwich and Badhams pharmacy in Evesham—show how seriously the general public take this matter. Secondly, he should be wary of full-blooded competition. I bear the scars of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission report on the supply of beer from when I was a special adviser at the Department of Trade and Industry. Be very, very wary.

Gerry Sutcliffe: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind remarks. As I have emerged from the dark arts of the Whips Office, I pay tribute to the wonderful job that Whips of all parties do in the House. I know where my bread is buttered.
	We have had the opportunity to debate all the issues openly. Nobody is attacking the work of community pharmacies, which do a tremendous amount for our constituencies, but the OFT report has shown that there may be some gaps. Our response will be measured and sensitive to all the issues that have been raised, not only in petitions but in all the correspondence that the Department has received. This is a cross-departmental matter, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman and others will appreciate our response when we publish it.

Phyllis Starkey: I echo the congratulations to the Minister, as well as the urging of caution in responding to the OFT report. In particular, has he given attention to the fact that the report did not examine the competition that exists between community pharmacies in the additional services that they provide, especially for nursing homes, such as prescription audits, prescription packs for the homes' residents, and home delivery services?

Gerry Sutcliffe: I thank my hon. Friend for her welcome. She raises an interesting point that will be taken into consideration in our deliberations. I do not want to be drawn too far on this question, because the process is still going on, but we will make the announcement before the summer recess.

Henry Bellingham: I, too, welcome the Minister to his post and wish him well in it. He will be aware of the great worry and uncertainty among pensioners. I received a petition the other days from Stockleys pharmacy, signed by 500 people in my constituency. Can he guarantee that there will be an oral statement before the recess, and will he take the opportunity to make it clear today that he will not give in to the wishes of the large retailers—many of which fund the Labour party—but stand up as a champion of small businesses?

Gerry Sutcliffe: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his welcome. Clearly, we do not want the community pharmacies, which we acknowledge are doing a wonderful job, to be threatened by any outside sources. We will ensure that we have a balanced and sensitive package that meets everybody's needs.
	The hon. Gentleman's remarks about organisations that support the Labour party, however, do not become him. The format of the announcement is still under consideration and we will inform him in due course.

Gordon Prentice: What weight does my hon. Friend—my good friend—give to the very persuasive Health Committee report, which suggests that if the OFT recommendations are accepted there is a great likelihood of closures, and that little in the way of savings would be made to the public purse?

Gerry Sutcliffe: I thank my hon. Friend for that. We are looking at all aspects of the situation, and the Health Committee report was very helpful in that regard. It expressed some concern about the OFT report, but it did accept the need for some competition in the marketplace. The points that he raised will be considered, as will the Health Committee report.

World Trade Organisation

Simon Thomas: If she will make a statement on her objectives for the forthcoming WTO meeting in Cancun.

Patricia Hewitt: Our immediate objectives are to secure agreement on affordable access to medicines, and on a framework for an agreement on agriculture. We shall also press for agreeing special and differential treatment for developing countries, reducing non-agricultural tariffs and increasing private services liberalisation.

Simon Thomas: On that last point, will the Secretary of State give an undertaking that in Cancun, she will not take a position that prevents developing countries from controlling their own economies or deciding on their own period of trade liberalisation and timetable for free trade? Will she ensure that the trade emerging from Cancun is fair trade, and not just free trade?

Patricia Hewitt: As I have said repeatedly, what we want to do within the WTO is to create a framework of trade rules that is indeed fair, as well as free. That means sorting out rules on special and differential treatment, so that developing countries can indeed pace liberalisation with particular reference to products and sectors that are of great importance and sensitivity to their own economies. I hope that the hon. Gentleman is not falling into the trap of believing that the way in which developing countries should cope with agricultural subsidies in Europe and America, for instance, is by trying to match them with their own subsidies. The answer is for us to dismantle our subsidies and open up our markets to their products.

Martin O'Neill: Surely one of the most important things that could come out of Cancun would be an enhanced reputation for the WTO, because it represents a rules-based trading system, which is the most effective way of reducing tariffs. In some respects, that is more effective than the granting of vast sums of aid, which can often be dissipated by all manner of incompetence and corruption in the recipient countries.

Patricia Hewitt: I strongly agree with my hon. Friend. It is very clear that if we can create a system of free and fair world trade, we will deliver far bigger benefits to the developing countries than aid budgets ever will. We need both, but trade is crucial. I also agree about the importance of the WTO and, indeed, of the growing capacity of developing countries, which are now using WTO rules to try to enforce access, on fair terms, to the markets of developed countries. The reality is that if we do not succeed in Cancun, we will destroy the possibility of a rules-based trading system. That understanding is growing and people are redoubling their efforts to ensure that we do indeed succeed in this Doha development round.

Roy Beggs: I fully support the Secretary of State's commitment to fair and free trade. Poorer people in developing countries would like to help themselves, and if we can give them a hand up, rather than a handout, that is a better way forward. Does she accept that our own farming community is very concerned about what the future holds, and that it is important that the Government should, at the earliest possible date, actively spell out how the proposals will affect family farms and their other impacts?

Patricia Hewitt: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his remarks on the negotiations. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has already set out the principles through which we will approach agricultural policy reform in the United Kingdom. The agreement that we reached last week was broadly welcomed within farming communities. It will enable them to receive support from taxpayers for sustaining the rural environment, but it will no longer give them ridiculous incentives to over-produce and over-farm land, which is damaging to our own environment, as well as to that of developing countries. I think that the complete transformation of the common agricultural policy will be good for our farmers and good for our rural environment, as well as for some of the poorest people in the world.

Mr. Speaker: Kevin Brennan.

Tim Yeo: rose—

Mr. Speaker: My apologies, Mr. Yeo.

Tim Yeo: I am most grateful to you, Mr. Speaker. That may have been an anticipation of your birthday celebrations. May I offer generic congratulations to you, Mr. Speaker, to the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Pound), to anyone else born on 3 July and to all the distinguished new arrivals on the Front Bench on both sides of the House? I particularly endorse the remarks of the Minister for Employment Relations, Competition and Consumers when he paid a warm and fully justified tribute to the integrity, conscientiousness and distinction of the Whips on both sides of the House—especially my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff). I am heading for an evening off one day next week.
	Given that controversies over genetically modified crops may well surface at Cancun, will the Secretary of State join me in rejecting President Bush's criticism that European anxieties over the environmental impact of GM crops are not scientifically based? Will the British Government give unqualified support to proposals for a rigorous, robust and transparent labelling regime for all foods containing genetically modified ingredients, so that consumers in Britain and other countries know exactly what they are eating?

Patricia Hewitt: I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the American Administration does not sufficiently understand the depth of public concern on food safety issues, particularly GM food, in the European Union. That forms an important part of the background to our negotiations within the WTO. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has made clear, we strongly support a proper and practicable labelling regime for GM ingredients. We think that there should be a full public debate on that issue and we are facilitating that, but we need to proceed on the basis of rigorous scientific evidence. That is what we are doing and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will support us.

Steel Industry

Kevin Brennan: If she will make a statement on the prospects for the steel industry.

Jacqui Smith: Recent restructuring in the steel industry, together with some signs of recovery in the steel market and exchange rate improvements, provide this important sector with the opportunity to build for a sustainable future. UK macro-economic stability, low inflation and interest rates at their lowest for 50 years also provide a sound foundation.

Kevin Brennan: I welcome my hon. Friend to her new post. She was outstanding in the Department of Health and I am sure that she will be in her new role.
	It was a disaster last year when, despite the best efforts of the Department and the National Assembly for Wales, Allied Steel and Wire in Cardiff closed down, largely on account of the short-sightedness of the banks. Will my hon. Friend join me in welcoming the news that the Spanish steel company, Celsa, is reopening the steel plant in Cardiff, re-creating many of the jobs that existed before, and has pledged to produce even more steel than was produced before ASW closed?

Jacqui Smith: Yes, I share my hon. Friend's concern and disappointment about the regrettable demise of ASW, and I join him in welcoming the Celsa Group's plans to resume steel making at Cardiff. That is good news for many of the communities in the area, whose interests my hon. Friend has ably championed. I hope and believe that many former ASW—and, indeed, Corus—workers and former contractors will be re-employed by Celsa, thereby making use of the considerable skills and productivity of UK steelworkers. They are part of the strength of that industry.

Ashok Kumar: I welcome my hon. Friend to the Front Bench. I thank the Secretary of State for her recent visit to Teesside steelworks, which was greatly appreciated by many of my constituents and across Teesside; she was the first Secretary of State ever to visit Redcar steelworks. Has the Minister seen the Trade and Industry Committee report on the future of the steel industry? It made many recommendations, one of which was for the Government to set up a national steel forum. I urge her to give strong support to that recommendation, because such a forum could help to ensure that we continue to have a successful steel industry in the future.

Jacqui Smith: I thank my hon. Friend for those comments. I know that the visit by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was welcomed on Teesside, and that she was impressed with relations locally. She was also impressed by the commitment shown by my hon. Friend himself, and by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) to ensuring the future of steel in their communities.
	I have had the opportunity to look at the Select Committee on Trade and Industry report, and I welcome many of its recommendations. We will look carefully at the specific recommendation about the steel forum. We have already taken action by giving Government support in respect of lean manufacturing and some of the metal technologies, for example. The intention with the steel forum is to bring together stakeholders such as businesses, employees and trade unions, who will play such an important part by working together to ensure that the steel industry has a future. We will respond to the Select Committee report, and I assure my hon. Friend that I will give his representations very serious consideration.

Atypical Workers

Huw Edwards: If she will make a statement on the consultation on employment rights for atypical workers.

Gerry Sutcliffe: Responses to the consultation are currently being analysed, and the Government hope to publish a response to the consultation later this year.

Huw Edwards: I thank my hon. Friend for that response and welcome him to his post. Last year, I visited the Department with a large delegation of clergy and ministers of religion who feel that they have no redress against discrimination and unfair dismissal. The delegation included members of the Anglican, United Reform, Greek Orthodox and other faiths. Given the Government's commitment to ending social exclusion, will my hon. Friend end the exclusion of the clerical profession from the employment rights enjoyed by all other professions?

Gerry Sutcliffe: I thank my hon. Friend for his kind remarks. I am well aware of his work in this area. The issues that he raised are sensitive and cause great concern to all involved. The consultation on this matter is progressing. I think that, in the near future, I should meet my hon. Friend and the people whom he represents to talk through the issues in more detail. I too am very concerned about employment rights, on which the Government have a proud record. I should like to meet my hon. Friend to discuss the matter further.

John Bercow: I congratulate the Minister on his appointment, and wish him well in the fulfilment of his responsibilities. Agency workers are atypical workers, and Britain, France, Germany and the Netherlands accounted for 80 per cent. of such staff in the EU. Both the Confederation of British Industry and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development are concerned that the agency workers directive could threaten to destroy up to 160,000 jobs. Will the Minister undertake to press, inside the EU, for a sunset clause in any such directive? That would allow us to look again, in due course, at whether the directive has been damaging or beneficial.

Gerry Sutcliffe: I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that point about the agency workers directive. Clearly, a balance has to be struck. The UK position remains unchanged, in the sense that we want to make sure that agency workers' minimum rights are protected, but also that jobs remain for them to do. There is no immediate reason to believe that the European directive will change matters, but we will monitor the situation and make our opinion known in due course and in light of circumstances in the UK.

George Foulkes: Thank you for calling me, Mr. Speaker, even though it is not my birthday and I have not been appointed to anything recently. However, does my hon. Friend the Minister agree that the most atypical workers in this country—if they can be called workers—are the ones who get paid for failure? I am talking about the directors who reward themselves with hundreds of thousands of pounds even when they produce huge losses instead of profits. Surely it is about time that the Government took some firm action to ensure that such gross rewards for failure are not given out in future.

Gerry Sutcliffe: I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend, and I am sure that he will be in the sunlight again in the near future. He makes a good point. The Government have already acted on unfair rewards and rewards for failure, and we will look again at the matter and try to do more. Clearly, it is difficult to tell low-paid workers to be more productive when others give themselves such large awards—23 per cent. is one figure that I have heard in that connection. It is important that we strike the right balance, and the Government will continue to monitor the situation.

School Leavers

Elfyn Llwyd: What plans she has to provide financial assistance to firms in the small and medium sectors to enable them to engage further workers, with particular reference to school leavers.

Nigel Griffiths: Since 1997, more than 2 million small businesses have been established creating 2.3 million more jobs, which is why no direct financial assistance is given. The House will be keen to learn what Plaid Cymru's precise budget is for that.

Elfyn Llwyd: I congratulate everybody on both sides of the House, in case I leave somebody out.
	I am not going to talk about budgets, as I am actually questioning the Minister; I do not think that he is supposed to be questioning me. He will realise that more than 90 per cent. of employees in Wales are engaged in the small and medium sectors, which are a very large part of the Welsh economy—I am sure that the same is true of England and Scotland. What incentives are there to assist those hard-pressed businesses which complain that they are under continued pressure, day in day out, from red tape, paperwork and so on? We need to alleviate the problems experienced in that sector while encouraging those businesses to take on more employees. That was the point of my question and I should like the Minister to answer it.

Nigel Griffiths: The hon. Gentleman has shifted from budgets—I think that financial assistance is budgets—to the wider question, which I am happy to answer. When I met the Federation of Small Businesses in Swansea recently, its representatives told me how much they appreciated the raising of the VAT threshold, which has benefited 700,000 small businesses in Wales, England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. A lot more work can be done, however, and I welcome constructive comments from anyone in the House that will help us to achieve that goal. I pay tribute to the small businesses in Wales.

Bob Blizzard: In order to help small businesses expand and employ more people, will my hon. Friend look again at the threshold for accessing level 2 regional selective assistance funding? At present, a business has to invest £500,000 to qualify, which is beyond many small businesses. On the other hand, if they go for level 3 assistance, the pot is small and not worth much. Will my hon. Friend look again at how those funds operate?

Nigel Griffiths: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has been engaged in one of the most extensive reviews of business support. The aim is to ensure that businesses of all sizes can access both the appropriate financial expertise and mentoring. Of course, we shall take on board what my hon. Friend said; we are keen to ensure that the thresholds are appropriate, but they must also be consistent with European legislation.

Tim Yeo: As we learned only this morning that the higher national insurance contributions and extra regulations imposed by the Government have destroyed 1,400 jobs at Britain's biggest bank, does the Minister agree that giving financial assistance to small and medium-sized enterprises to encourage them to create jobs will be a complete waste of taxpayers' money unless it is preceded by a cut in the huge burden of extra tax, national insurance contributions, climate change levy and pensions tax and a reversal in the ever-increasing tide of regulation? Unless it was preceded by those moves, we should simply be throwing away good money.

Nigel Griffiths: Responsible employers—I understand that they made several billion pounds in profit in the past year, so they are not doing so badly—should appreciate that labour costs in Europe are far higher in the round, as the CBI unreservedly accepts, even after the increase in national insurance. They should also accept that our drive is to invest in the health service to ensure that people who are off work sick or waiting for operations can return to work and play a productive part in the work force. People benefit from the relief of pain—not a moment too soon—and employers also benefit from getting workers back to work more quickly, so it is only fair that both should pay.

John Taylor: I declare an interest as chairman of Solihull Business Enterprise. I invite the Minister to agree that, if in doubt, one of the most benign things that the Government can do to small businesses is to leave them alone.

Nigel Griffiths: I could not agree more—except some small businesses ask me for considerable help.

Post Office Card Accounts

Richard Page: How many Post Office card accounts have been opened.

Stephen Timms: I understand from Post Office Ltd. that, by 20 June 2003, 57,000 Post Office card accounts had been opened. By that date, 430,000 people had indicated that they wanted to open a card account, so the number of accounts opened will grow rapidly in the period ahead.

Richard Page: I thank the Minister for those, in fact, disappointing figures. May I say, because he is a nice chap, how much I regret the fact that he has been unable to unload the role and responsibility for the Post Office on to some other unfortunate Minister, as it really is a disaster and an absolute black hole? Can he explain to the House how his colleagues at the Department for Work and Pensions have estimated that there will be 3 million Post Office card accounts, but the Post Office has calculated that there will be 5 million? As the Post Office has done the 5 million calculation to ensure the viability of those sub-post offices that survive the present savage cull, what will happen to them if Ministers at the Department for Works and Pensions are right with their 3 million figure? What will the Minister do to ensure a 5 million take-up of Post Office card accounts to make sure that our sub-post offices—those that are left—survive?

Stephen Timms: The Post Office is progressing extremely well. Large numbers of Post Office card accounts are being opened, as I have said, and they are proving particularly popular among pensioners. Everyone who wants a card account will get one. My hon. Friends at the Department for Work and Pensions have indicated that they now expect the number to be above the 3 million figure, which was the initial working assumption.
	It is very important not to miss the bigger opportunity. From this week, Lloyds TSB current account holders can use their cashpoint cards to obtain cash at any post office in the country. I tried that on my way in at the Members' Post Office, and I am pleased to say that it worked extremely well. With Alliance and Leicester and Barclays already offering that service, that brings to 19 million the number of current accounts now accessible at every post office in the country. That is a huge commercial opportunity for the post office network. It is half as many again, for example, as the total number of state benefit and pension recipients, and the Post Office can now make a success of that opportunity.

David Drew: Does my hon. Friend accept that, because of the difficulties that some people still have in gaining access to the Post Office card account, there should be a clear understanding—obviously, he will have to talk to those at the Department for Work and Pensions about this—that, if people choose not to open a bank account, the Post Office card account should be the failsafe system, so that post offices would be guaranteed that anyone who chose not to have a bank account should have a Post Office card account?

Stephen Timms: I agree that all those who do not want a bank account will be given a Post Office card account if they decide that they want one. That has been built into the process, so I can give absolutely that assurance to my hon. Friend.

Broadband

Steve Webb: If she will make a statement on her strategy for enabling residential customers to benefit from the provision of broadband internet access in publicly-funded organisations.

Stephen Timms: The public services between them expect to invest £1 billion in broadband connectivity over the next three years. Our intention is to aggregate demand to maximise the chance to extend broadband availability to users outside the public services, as well as to obtain the best value for the public services themselves.

Steve Webb: I am grateful to the Minister for that answer, but will he be more precise on timing and process? A school in the village where I happen to live will get wireless broadband because it is too far away from the BT exchange. Lots of people live near the school, and they are asking me when they can benefit from the school's broadband. The Minister has set up a task group and is spending £1 billion, but when and how?

Stephen Timms: I am delighted to hear that broadband is being extended to the hon. Gentleman's local school. Every school in the country—primary and secondary—will benefit from broadband over the next three years. I am not able to tell him precisely when the service will be extended to others in his local community, but he makes a very important point. Of course, particularly with wireless broadband, once that facility is available to the school I can see no reason why others should not benefit from it as well. In fact, there are examples of schools around the country that have become the hub for community-based wireless broadband services, and I very much welcome that development.

John Gummer: Can the Minister help with villages in my constituency that are also bereft of schools, and in which broadband provision is therefore an important way of helping them to retain liveliness? Can he give us some hope that we will be able to help specifically the very remote areas that many of us represent?

Stephen Timms: Yes, I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman about the importance of that. We can be optimistic about the prospects. He will know that the East of England Development Agency has been active in supporting broadband, and a number of rural communities in Suffolk and elsewhere in the east of England are benefiting as a result. We recently completed successfully an auction of wireless spectrum, which will be available for wireless broadband, and I expect that that will be advantageous to rural communities, too. We can therefore be hopeful about the prospects in the months ahead.

Smaller Enterprises (State Promotion)

Jim Cousins: What assessment she has made of the effectiveness of state-funded promotion of smaller enterprises.

Nigel Griffiths: The best assessment of the effectiveness of our DTI small business support programmes is contained in the reports of the Small Business Council, whose 24 members are all successful entrepreneurs. I know from my ministerial visits to the north-east that there are many success stories, and I want to work with my hon. Friend to achieve even more.

Jim Cousins: I very much welcome Labour's new economic policy for small businesses, and I am extremely disturbed to learn that the Conservative party would want to scrap it completely. That support, however, must be clear and effective. Is my hon. Friend the Minister as concerned as I am by the statement of the chair of the regional development agency in the north-east that there are no less than 200 different organisations trying to support small business within fives miles of the centre of Newcastle? Does he have any proposals to rationalise that, to get some clarity and to establish robust, clear support that new and small businesses can understand and with which they can work?

Nigel Griffiths: Indeed. One NorthEast, the regional development agency, has conducted its own review of business support to ensure that all funds for the purpose are held in one pot, to get a strong focus on start-ups and to meet the needs of SME customers who choose the service that they want. I also pay tribute to the £13 million being spent in Tyne and Wear on business support, which is being co-ordinated by Business Link Tyne and Wear. Those two important agencies are co-operating, and I am sure that they will take the advice of my hon. Friend on board.

Martin Smyth: I declare an interest as an unpaid director of Ormeau enterprise park. Does the Minister accept that small businesses need help when they start up? Unfortunately, those who may fund some of those businesses may have a mindset that, when they have failures, they cannot be relied on to go forward in the future. Do we not need to change that mindset, bearing in mind that even large firms with enterprising inventions have had to repeat their experiments to succeed?

Nigel Griffiths: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. When I was in Belfast a couple of weeks ago discussing this issue with Bill Jeffrey of the Federation of Small Businesses, I stressed to him that the changes in the insolvency provisions that we have already made, which take the focus away from the honest failures and allow us to concentrate on the small minority of dishonest failures, will help to introduce a culture into Britain that to start up in business, to run a business, and to fail because the wrong product or service is being offered at the wrong time is not something of which to be ashamed. I encourage all Members of the House and the press to take that approach and to ensure that people are given encouragement to start business again. In the United States of America, people are not a success in business unless they have had at least one failure.

Objective 1

Wayne David: Whether she has made a recent assessment of the effectiveness of objective 1 programmes in the UK.

Jacqui Smith: The DTI and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister are co-financing an evaluation of the added value and costs of EU structural funds in the UK, including in the objective 1 regions. That is expected to be completed before the end of 2003.
	In addition, as required by the EU regulations, managing authorities and programme secretariats are currently carrying out mid-term evaluations of all structural funds programmes for the current programming period. Those will feed into the mid-term reviews, which will provide a basis for adapting the programming documents if necessary.

Wayne David: I thank the Minister for her reply. She will know that the largest objective 1 programme in the country is in west Wales and the valleys. That programme is proving to be effective for the regeneration of communities and the creation of jobs. Does she agree that there is a strong case to be made for simplifying the grant application process for the structural funds?

Jacqui Smith: I agree with my hon. Friend. I understand that the specific objective 1 programme to which he refers is on target to deliver its important improvements for jobs in west Wales and the areas that it covers. I agree that we need to ensure that while getting the best out of the funds, we eliminate bureaucracy and reduce burdens whenever possible. It was, of course, during the 1999 renegotiations on the current programme of structural funds that the Government were able to push for, and make, improvements to the bureaucracy surrounding the administration of the structural funds. That will certainly have a significant bearing on our current work on improvements for the next tranche.

MINISTER FOR WOMEN

The Minister was asked—

Women Clergy

Huw Edwards: What representations she has received about amending the law to give women clergy protection against discrimination.

Jacqui Smith: I know that this is an area that my hon. Friend has actively pursued, not least earlier in this Question Time. Although we have received no specific representations about amending the law to give women clergy protection against discrimination, we are obviously pleased, as a Government who are keen to promote equality for women, that 2,000 women have been ordained in the Church of England since the Priests (Ordination of Women) Measure 1993 was introduced.

Huw Edwards: Will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating the two women who were ordained into the Church in Wales by the Bishop of Monmouth last Saturday? Does she agree that although an increasing number of women have been ordained in the Anglican Church and other denominations, many face discrimination when seeking appointments? I urge her to ensure that women clergy get the same rights as other women in other occupations. They should be included in anti-discrimination and equal opportunities legislation.

Jacqui Smith: I am very happy to join my hon. Friend in congratulating the recently ordained women to whom he referred. I was pleased that a woman priest presided in the House of Commons during our own Prayer session before Question Time. It is an important step forward for the Church. I recognise my hon. Friend's concerns about particular restrictions, such as those in section 19 of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975. Although we have no plans to reform that, we will continue to keep the law as it applies to religious bodies under review in the light of developments in EU law.

Lady Hermon: Mr. Speaker, I wish you and the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Pound) many happy returns of the day. If anyone wants an additional birthday, I volunteer mine—I am in the mood to give them away.
	I congratulate the Minister on her appointment. I welcome her to the Dispatch Box in her new role and wish her all the best. I bring to her attention a worrying report entitled, "They shoot children don't they?", which focuses on child victims of paramilitary punishments in Northern Ireland. Will she speak to her colleagues in the Northern Ireland Office to ensure that women clergy in Northern Ireland who have condemned, and voiced their abhorrence of, paramilitary intimidation in their communities and congregations will not be discriminated against? I would appreciate that very much.

Jacqui Smith: I have no doubt that the fact that the hon. Lady raised the issue in the House will have been important enough to highlight it. I undertake to ensure that the report to which she referred is brought to the attention of my colleagues in the Northern Ireland Office.

Ann Cryer: May I put on record my support for the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (Mr. Edwards)? Is the Minister aware of an organisation called the group for the rescinding of the Act of Synod? It organised a meeting two weeks ago at which I spoke, and many of the women in the group are angry because of the discrimination from which they still suffer 10 years on from the date when women were ordained into the Church of England.

Jacqui Smith: I know that my hon. Friend also pays close attention to the issue. I am not aware of the group to which she refers, although I am certainly willing to consider its concerns if she passes them on to me. However, the very fact that she mentions the Priests (Ordination of Women) Measure 1993, passed by the Synod of the Church of England, gives an idea of where the responsibility lies. I reiterate that I welcome the progress made by the Church of England. Despite the possibility contained in the measure of opting out of the welcome ability to ordain women, fewer than 1,000 parishes out of more than 13,000 have chosen to do that, although I do understand my hon. Friend's concerns.

Women's Pensions

John Barrett: What recent discussions she has had with (a) the Treasury and (b) the Department for Work and Pensions on women's pensions.

Patricia Hewitt: The Department is in regular contact, at both ministerial and official level, with colleagues in the Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions about women's pensions. I welcome the commitment of the Department for Work and Pensions to consider this issue further in the light of the responses it received to its pensions Green Paper.

John Barrett: Given that pensioner poverty is highest among women, with almost three quarters of pensioners on income support being female, what action will the right hon. Lady take with other Departments to ensure that that does not get worse? Some 1.5 million women in their 40s and 50s are about to receive derisory pensions as low as 7p per week because they followed the Government's advice and paid the lower national insurance rate for married women.

Patricia Hewitt: The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point about the poverty of many women in retirement. We, of course, have made a great difference to those women with the minimum income guarantee, the pension credit and the increase in the basic retirement pension.
	On the issue of the married women's stamp, the hon. Gentleman is completely wrong. When that option was available to them, women made their own decision whether to pay full contributions or the reduced rate. If they paid the reduced rate, they still receive 60 per cent. of their husband's pension. In today's terms, the husband gets a pension of £77 a week; the wife, having paid no contributions of her own, receives a pension of £46 a week. It would grossly unfair to give someone who had paid no contributions—[Interruption.]—who had paid the reduced married women's stamp, which was not designed to pay for a pension, the full single person's retirement pension. That would give her the same pension as a married woman who had chosen to pay the full stamp, thereby reducing her earnings when she was in work. That would be grossly unfair and I am astonished that it is the position of the Liberals.

Julie Morgan: Does my right hon. Friend agree that one reason why women are poor in retirement is that they have caring responsibilities and take time off to look after children or elderly parents? What does she intend to do to address that issue?

Patricia Hewitt: My hon. Friend is right. I know that she, like me, will welcome the fact that the second state pension, which we are introducing, will for the first time allow women and men who have taken time out of employment for caring responsibilities to build up a proper second pension on top of their basic pension. Over time, that will benefit millions of carers, the vast majority of whom are women.

Caroline Spelman: Will the Minister confirm that women with broken national insurance records will not benefit in full from the Government's new pension credit? Will the Government follow the call of my hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) that those women should be able to buy back the missing years?

Patricia Hewitt: I think that the hon. Lady is wrong about the pension credit, although I will check that with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and write to her. It has always been possible for people to make additional contributions to fill broken records or missed contributions. Indeed, the Department for Work and Pensions and its predecessor have, on several occasions, written directly to married women who had chosen to pay the reduced contribution to draw their attention to the consequences that that would have for their pension provision.

National Insurance (Married Women)

Steve Webb: What discussions she has had with women's groups concerning the operation of the married women's national insurance stamp.

Patricia Hewitt: I have discussed the issue of women and pensions with a number of women's organisations, including the Women's Budget Group, the Women's National Commission, the National Black Women's Network and the National Federation of Women's Institutes. Of course, that included the operation of the married women's national insurance stamp.

Steve Webb: Is the Minister familiar with the Support Women Against Poverty network, which we helped to establish, which brings together women throughout Britain who have a variety of concerns about the way in which the pension system works to the disadvantage of women? Would the right hon. Lady be willing to meet me and a group of these women from around Britain who have a range of concerns about the way that pensions are bad news for women, and listen to what they have to say?

Patricia Hewitt: Of course. However, I stress that in the steps that we have already taken on the state pension scheme, we have made a real difference for women pensioners in particular, including the proposals recently announced, for instance, to simplify pension splitting in divorce and to enable people to take the full pension value out of their occupational pension scheme, even if they have less than two years' service. We are taking further steps to improve pensions provision for women.

Glenda Jackson: In the meetings, will my right hon. Friend include representations from those women who believe that their title of common law wife affords them legal protection, but who discover on the death of their invariably long-term partner that that is most certainly not the case in terms of pensions and the sharing of pensions?

Patricia Hewitt: My hon. Friend draws attention to an important point. Like her, some of my constituents discovered too late that being a common law wife has no status in law. I welcome the fact that my hon. Friend the Deputy Minister for Women and Equality has agreed that my right hon. and noble Friend the Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs will consider how we can better inform women in this position about the legal risks that they are running should their relationship break up.

Colin Challen: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: I shall take points of order after the statements.

Business of the House

Eric Forth: Will the part-time Leader of the House give us the business for next week?

Peter Hain: The business for next week will be as follows:
	Monday 7 July—Opposition Day [13th Allotted Day]. There will be a debate entitled "Failure of the Government to meet its Targets", followed by a debate entitled "Failure of the Government's Tax Credits Scheme". Both debates will arise on an Opposition motion.
	Tuesday 8 July—Remaining stages of the Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Bill, followed by Commons consideration of Lords amendments.
	Wednesday 9 July—Debate on the Convention on the Future of Europe on a Government motion, followed by remaining stages of the Hunting Bill.
	Thursday 10 July—Debate on Economic and Monetary Union on a motion for the Adjournment of the House.
	Friday 11 July—Private Members' Bills.
	The provisional business for the following week will be:
	Monday 14 July—Commons consideration of Lords amendments.
	Tuesday 15 July—Second Reading of the Sexual Offences Bill [Lords], followed by Commons consideration of Lords amendments.
	Wednesday 16 July—Opposition Day [14th Allotted Day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion, subject to be announced, followed by Commons consideration of Lords amendments.
	Thursday 17 July—Commons consideration of Lords amendments, followed by motion on the summer recess Adjournment followed, if necessary, by further Commons consideration of Lords amendments.
	The House will not Adjourn until Royal Assent has been received to any Act.
	As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health, then Leader of the House, made clear on 1 May, the events in Iraq had a considerable impact on the business of the House. My right hon. Friend called for the co-operation of the House to ensure that the summer recess dates remained unchanged. It is for these reasons that business may continue beyond the normal moment of interruption, allowing the House every opportunity fully to scrutinise and contribute to the business coming forward up to and including 17 July.
	It may be for the convenience of the House to expect sitting beyond the moment of interruption on Tuesday 8 July, Wednesday 9 July, Thursday 10 July, Tuesday 15 July, Wednesday 16 July and possibly Thursday 17 July.
	On behalf of the House, Mr. Speaker, I wish you a happy birthday.
	With your permission, may I say that my mother and father are present to see their son perform at business questions? I am sure that when they were imprisoned under apartheid in South Africa in the early 1960s they never imagined being in this position, or my being in this position.

Eric Forth: We very much welcome what the part-time Leader of the House has just said—we are getting back to business. Instead of the House being forced to bunk off early every evening, we will have an opportunity to do some proper scrutiny, which is a welcome development. The part-time Leader of the House might bear that in mind when thinking about the longer term and the hours that the House sits, and he might start to draw conclusions. However, it is indeed a welcome announcement.
	Last night, the shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale) said at column 498:
	"We understand that tomorrow the Government intend to publish a White Paper that will contain major policy announcements about the future of the national lottery. We further understand that the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport is to give a press conference and a major speech on the matter, but given previous rulings by Mr. Speaker, I am sure you would deprecate it if such announcements were made at press conferences and on the "Today" programme, but not through a statement in the House."
	Following that, Mr. Deputy Speaker said that
	"Mr. Speaker has made his views on these matters very clear on many occasions".
	After a modest intervention by myself, Mr. Deputy Speaker said:
	"Mr. Speaker feels extremely strongly about these matters and I have no doubt that those on the Government Front Bench will have heard the points that have been made."—[Official Report, 2 July 2003; Vol. 408, c. 498.]
	Sadly, it appears that those Ministers either did not hear those points or casually ignored them. Indeed, a significant announcement on the national lottery was sneaked out in a written ministerial statement. A document was smuggled into the Library at 11.20 this morning, in which the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport says:
	"I am today publishing a document".
	That document is the written statement which, according to the Secretary of State,
	"proposes a radical new approach to licensing the national lottery."
	Mr. Speaker, you have ruled repeatedly from the Chair that major policy statements should be made in the House by Ministers so that they can be held to account. In blatant disregard of your rulings, we have yet another example of a Secretary of State who, I am told, appeared in the media this morning, has been on the radio, toured the studios and spoke to everyone except the House of Commons about this matter. Is the Leader of the House going to instruct her, even at this late stage, to come to the House this afternoon to answer questions on this matter? Frankly, Mr. Speaker, this is a challenge for you—how often are you going to put up with this blatant disregard of your rulings from the Chair by Ministers of the Crown? It is quite unacceptable, and I hope that something will be done about it.
	I should also like to ask for an urgent debate entitled "The Government's approach to child welfare", which would give us an opportunity to explore the recent extraordinary appointment of the hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge) as, of all things, Minister for Children. If nothing else, that is surely an example of the Prime Minister's complete lack of judgment and sensitivity. Given the many former professional social workers on the Labour Benches, he has an ample of choice of people who know about the subject and can easily demonstrate a record of genuine care of children. Instead, he chose the former leader of Islington council. At the very least, that is an insult to the damaged children of Islington and their parents. At the very worst, it is yet another example of putting the Islington mafia before Islington children.

Peter Hain: That last comment demeans the shadow Leader of the House, but I will return to it later and answer directly the points that he made.
	Before I do so, however, I congratulate the hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) on his appointment as shadow deputy Leader of the House. He is widely respected and even liked in the House, which is not the case for all of us. I assume that the leader of the Conservative party put him in that position so that he could act as a minder for the shadow Leader of the House. After the performance that we have just witnessed, he will have a lot of minding to do. I hope that the hon. Member for Witney can influence the shadow Leader of the House to look more closely at the reshuffle announcements made by the leader of his party before continuing to criticise the Government's reshuffles.
	For example, we have heard regular calls from the shadow Home Secretary—[Interruption.] I am responding to the use of the term "part-time Leader of the House" and other comments from the shadow Leader of the House. The right hon. Gentleman said that he wanted a heavyweight Minister for homeland security. What happens? When the appointment is made earlier this week, the shadow Minister is not even a member of the shadow Cabinet. How can he be a heavyweight shadow Minister dealing with homeland security if he is not even in the shadow Cabinet?
	On the business of the House and the hours, the House took a view on the hours and that was for the rest of the Parliament. If hon. Members wish to make representations to me on that matter, we can consider that for the future, but the House took a decision and we have operated the present system for only six months. We will need to consider how it beds in and what we do for the future.
	On the point about a statement to the House, over the past months and years the Government have made more statements to the House than almost any Government in recent memory. As for the nonsense about a statement being sneaked out and smuggled into the Library, I do not know whether the shadow Leader of the House smuggles himself into the Library in order to consult its contents, but that is just rhetoric. The truth is that the two written statements to the House were made by the Secretary of State in the usual way. She acted absolutely properly on an important announcement, which I should have thought even the right hon. Gentleman would welcome, about renewing and regenerating the lottery, particularly with the Government's intention of making an Olympic bid in mind.
	I turn to the right hon. Gentleman's rather disreputable attack on my hon. Friend the Minister for Children. I refer to her excellent work over recent years, which I am sure every Member of the House would support. She has carried forward a policy that has provided free part-time early education for all four-year-olds and established a growing child-minding sector, with 647,000 new child care places being created. She helped develop the sure start programme, which provides a range of family and health services to local young children and their families in disadvantaged areas, and she took forward a neighbourhood nurseries policy. That is an excellent curriculum vitae for a children's Minister, and the shadow Leader of the House should withdraw those remarks.

Paul Tyler: First, Mr. Speaker, may I wish you many happy returns of the day? I hope your day will not be spoiled by yet another Secretary of State deciding that the media is the right place to make a major announcement. The Government cannot have it both ways: they cannot say that it is a great statement of new policy and a radical departure, and at the same time refuse to come to the House of Commons.
	When does the Leader of the House expect the House to be able to consider the Lords amendments to the Communications Bill? He will be aware that last night there were some extremely important exchanges in the Lords on that Bill in respect of cross-media ownership and the need for plurality. As we understand it, the Secretary of State is to produce some sort of statement about the precise terms in which the new regulator can insist on proper plurality before considering any cross-media ownership changes.
	Has the Leader of the House noted this morning the way in which the Italian media have treated the outrageous statement by Mr. Berlusconi? The Berlusconi blunder was not reported in any of his own media, of course, nor on the state television programme, although the independent papers in Italy covered it in full, and rightly so. Does he not recognise that that is an appalling example—an awful warning—of the dangers of monopolistic tendencies in the media? Does he accept that one of the reasons why we can claim to have a free society in this country, in contrast to Saddam's dictatorship in Iraq, is that we have a free media? Does he accept that Alastair Campbell's attack on the BBC and its freedom of editorial control, the weapons of mass distortion and distraction that he is deploying, and the bullying of the BBC, demean the Government rather than the BBC? Does he accept that we need a full debate on these matters when the Communications Bill returns to the House?

Peter Hain: The hon. Gentleman says that we cannot have it both ways. Actually, he and Conservative Members are the ones who want to have it both ways. When Ministers come to the House and make statements, they complain about the time that that takes, especially on Opposition days. They cannot have it both ways. There is already going to be a statement following business questions this afternoon.

Eric Forth: Longer hours.

Peter Hain: If the right hon. Gentleman is demanding that we should sit beyond 17 July—

Eric Forth: I did so last week.

Peter Hain: So it is the official Conservative position that we should say to all the House officials who have booked their holidays, "You should stay on, boys and girls, and forget about your holidays." Is he really saying that?

Eric Forth: indicated assent.

Peter Hain: Well, I think that he would find that he faced a revolt on behalf of officials in the House, let alone Opposition Members. I notice that Members on the Back Benches—[Interruption.] No, I have not booked my holiday, as it happens. I notice that Opposition Back Benchers are looking particularly glum about the way in which their Front-Bench spokesman is behaving and about cancelling all their holidays.
	The hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) asked me specifically about the Communications Bill. I would have thought that he would welcome the fact that the Government are listening to Parliament's opinion about the Bill and, as a result, will table Government amendments in the House of Lords. As I understand it, provisionally, the Third Reading of the Bill is on 8 July. Of course, it will then come back to us in the normal fashion.
	The hon. Gentleman asked about the Italian Prime Minister. As I understand it, Prime Minister Berlusconi is talking to the Chancellor of Germany at this moment; at least, he was scheduled to do so. No doubt, that will prove to be a very interesting conversation. Perhaps he will follow Basil Fawlty's dictum, "Don't mention the war."
	On the question of the BBC and the Government's attitude and complaint to it about the stance taken by its defence correspondent, may I commend the statement made by the hon. Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames), who said overnight, as I understand it, that it was totally and entirely untrue that the Government had interfered with the flow of secret intelligence? The hon. Gentleman was a respected Defence Minister and talked, as I understand it—he can confirm whether this is the case—very recently to the head of intelligence and knows that it was not true that the Government, Alastair Campbell or anybody else in Government circles sought to distort intelligence information. That would be an entirely improper thing to do and I think that the BBC should bear his comments in mind.

Ann Clwyd: May I say how much I welcome the Government's proposals to end age discrimination in employment? I hope that we can have a very early debate about this matter, as it is important to discuss employment practices in this House and the civil service. Please can we have an early debate about those issues?

Peter Hain: I am not sure whether it will be possible to have a very early debate, but, as my hon. Friend knows, the Government have issued a consultation paper and the Secretary of State for Trade Industry has taken that forward. The initiative will be very important, as what we are talking about is giving people a choice. That is what the policy is about—the moment at which people retire. I would have thought that the whole House would welcome that choice and join the Government in clamping down on age discrimination.

Nicholas Soames: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman to reconsider the answer that he gave to my right hon. Friend the shadow Leader of the House in respect of the Prime Minister's appointment of the new Minister for Children? Does he not accept that it is not enough to point to improvements that she recently made in an earlier job when that is set against one of the most atrocious periods of local government in London, during which she was responsible for homes in which there were some of the most serious cases of child abuse that have ever been seen in this country? Does he really believe that such a person is truly suitable for a job of this type?

Peter Hain: I am sorry to have to disagree with the hon. Gentleman, because he is highly respected in this House, and I share that respect, but he really cannot take this argument to such extremes. My hon. Friend has a very good record in Government of supporting children at all levels of life and taking forward such policies. I think that with hindsight the hon. Gentleman will regret those remarks.

Robin Cook: May I say to my right hon. Friend that one of the many reasons his mother and father have to be proud of him is that he consistently voted for modernisation of the sitting hours of the Commons?
	I have always recognised that there is a sound argument of tradition for keeping the old hours, but there can be no argument at all for the business managers pocketing the early starting hour and keeping the old finishing hour. Can I therefore invite my right hon. Friend to look beyond the dates in September to which he referred and give the House an assurance that when we resume after the summer recess he will in good faith implement the decision of the House to stop at 7 pm? In the course of the current discussions on the legislative programme, will he tackle the root cause of the problem, which is Whitehall's tendency to keep putting before us more legislation than we can properly scrutinise in any one Session?

Peter Hain: I have already made it clear that I regard the decision of the House in respect of hours as one for the rest of the Parliament, because that was the spirit of the decision that was taken. Of course, I am open to representations from all Members of the House if they think that that is unsatisfactory, think that adjustments should be made, or have views on the policy thereafter.
	In respect of the legislative programme, my right hon. Friend has a very good point. He will be aware, since I follow in his footsteps, of that problem. Indeed, I have been wrestling with it overnight and talking to Cabinet colleagues about it. We have to ensure that the legislative programme fits in with the hours that the House works and that there is opportunity for proper scrutiny. I do not intend to make it a practice to go beyond the moment of interruption, because that is not within the bounds of the House's decisions. However, I am sure that my right hon. Friend appreciates that in some circumstances it is necessary to do so for orderly business to proceed, and that it is for the convenience of Members and staff of the House to know when the recess is coming.

Gillian Shephard: Some weeks ago, I asked the then Leader of the House when the Government would publish their Green Paper on the Victoria Climbié inquiry. I later received a letter from him telling me that it would be published before the House rises for the summer recess. Would the Leader of the House like to confirm that that is still the case? If it is not, can he explain why the publication of the Green Paper is to be delayed? Could it have anything to do with the controversy surrounding the new Minister for Children? If so, is it not disgraceful that the Government are more concerned with stifling a controversy than with the needs of vulnerable children, two of whom die from abuse each and every week?

Peter Hain: I am a little unsighted on this matter. I shall deal with the hon. Lady's question in next week's business questions, if the opportunity arises. May I just say, however, that there is no connection at all between the Green Paper's publication date and the position of the Minister for Children, and that I regret that the right hon. Lady repeated the linkage that was made earlier?

Tony Colman: I welcome my constituents, the parents of the Leader of the House, and join in their pride that a former Labour candidate for Putney is now Leader of the House of Commons.
	May I draw the Leader of the House's attention to early-day motion 1413?
	[That this House notes that Professor Sir Roy Meadow give pivotal expert evidence in the murder trial of Sally Clark, who was subsequently cleared by the Court of Criminal Appeal; further notes that Professor Meadow discovered Munchausen's syndrome by proxy and might therefore be expected to diagnose that syndrome more readily than other, more sceptical experts; deplores the decision of the Crown Prosecution Service to field Professor Meadow in the trial of Trupti Patel; and calls for an urgent review of all cases in which Professor Meadow has given evidence, including those in the Family Court.]
	Professor Sir Roy Meadow has a role in many cases—not only in the criminal court, but many thousands in the family court—and there is a need for a full legal inquiry into those cases. Could there be a debate on that or a statement from the relevant Minister as to how such an inquiry can go forward?

Peter Hain: I had many happy days tramping the streets of Putney knocking on doors, although I must say that my hon. Friend is a much better representative for that community than I proved to be, because he actually got elected.
	The early-day motion concerns important issues. I commend him and his colleagues for placing it before the House, and we will bear in mind his request.

Eleanor Laing: I listened carefully to the answer that the Leader of the House gave to my right hon. Friend the Member for South-West Norfolk (Mrs. Shephard). This is too serious a matter to be dismissed in such a way. We all understand that he has not been in post for long, and that there are some matters on which he is unsighted. He may not be aware that representatives of Downing street made it clear this morning that Lord Laming's report on the protection of children following the tragic death of little Victoria Climbié has indeed been delayed because of the difficulties facing the new Minister for Children.

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Lady must take her seat. There seems to be a regular and concerted attack on the Minister for Children. The House should know that when an hon. Member is being attacked in such a way there should be a substantive motion before the House. I will not allow such matters to come up in business questions. I therefore ask the hon. Lady to be seated and inform other hon. Members who have this line of questioning that I will stop them.

Mark Hendrick: My right hon. Friend will be aware that it is some time since the publication of the Budd report on gaming. Will he look into how soon a new gaming Bill can be introduced to the House, because it would be of great benefit to seaside resorts and generate many jobs in the economy?

Peter Hain: I am aware of the impact of gaming on the economy, especially in seaside resorts. Careful thought is being given to creating an opportunity to introduce a Bill in the legislative programme that is now under consideration.

Kelvin Hopkins: Happy birthday, Mr. Speaker.
	My right hon. Friend will be aware that there is a substantial grouping of opposition to World Trade Organisation policies for so-called free trade and open markets across the world. He will also be aware of the Trade Justice Movement's opposition to those policies. I myself took part in a demonstration against them last Saturday. This week, the World Bank acknowledged that its policies have not helped the world's poor. Will my right hon. Friend make space for a major debate on the Floor of the House on future trade policy?

Peter Hain: In respect of the world's poor, I share my hon. Friend's ambitions to conquer world poverty. This Government have the best record of any British Government in taking forward a massive increase in our overseas aid and development budget and in leading the international campaign to lift the dreadful burden of debt from the poorest countries in the world.
	Along with many other Members, I received a delegation from the Trade Justice Movement in my surgery last Saturday morning, and I was very pleased to be photographed with them and to identify with their ambition. [Interruption.] They asked to be photographed with me, as it happens. I entirely share their goals. The Government are committed to taking forward an international trade round that truly frees up trade so that the poorest countries of the world, instead of being exploited by the rich part of the international community's trade protectionism, are able to get their produce into the markets of the richer world, including Europe. There will soon be an opportunity—next week, in International Development questions—for those issues to be raised.

George Young: In his statement, the Leader of the House said that he hoped that we would have enough opportunity to scrutinise the Government's legislation between now and the summer recess. I am sure that the servants of the House would respect a decision by the House to sit beyond the announced date if we felt that it needed to do so in order to hold the Government to account. May I ask him about Tuesday's business, specifically the remaining stages of the Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Bill? Is he aware that 54 clauses of that Bill were not discussed in Standing Committee, and that since it left Committee the Government have tabled a whole range of new clauses about GP contracts? Should we not spend all Tuesday on that business instead of combining it with Lords amendments to other Bills?

Peter Hain: I have considerable respect for the right hon. Gentleman and I hope that we shall work together, as we did last week on the Wicks committee. It was a good try at going beyond 17 July, but I shall not comply with that request. In any case, the decision has already been made.
	The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Bill. There has been plenty of opportunity for scrutiny of the measure, which has been well debated. I cannot agree with his point on that.

Angela Browning: Will there be an opportunity for hon. Members to know the Prime Minister's response to Mr. Berlusconi's intemperate remarks yesterday?
	I do not know whether the part-time Leader of the House or his deputy will reply to the summer Adjournment debates. The last debate of term takes place in a holiday atmosphere, and I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman will outline his attempts to persuade his Cabinet colleagues to holiday in the United Kingdom, perhaps in Wales. We would be worried if any member of the Government, including the Prime Minister, accepted Mr. Berlusconi's hospitality.

Peter Hain: That was an attempt to link so many issues that I shall not respond in detail to it. However, Prime Minister Berlusconi and his remarks bring into focus the Government's argument, which the Opposition consistently attack, for a stable presidency for the European Council. We have argued that a six-monthly, rotating presidency, which means that a new country with a new Head of Government takes charge and goes off in a specific direction, is not a good advertisement for the European Union's leadership. The presidency should be full time and for five years. That would mean a stable presidency, and everybody would know who represented Heads of Government in the European Council and the international community. I should have thought that even members of the Conservative party would support that common-sense approach.

Kevin Hughes: My right hon. Friend may know that Allan Leighton, chairman of Royal Mail, attended a meeting in the House yesterday at my invitation to answer hon. Members' questions about Royal Mail's decision to shift mail from rail to road. As far as I know, that was hon. Members' only opportunity to question that serious decision. Given that Royal Mail is a wholly owned company of the Government's, does my right hon. Friend share my view that hon. Members should have a proper opportunity to scrutinise the decision? Will he arrange a debate or a statement by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry?

Peter Hain: I am not sure whether there will be an opportunity for a debate or a statement, but I agree with my hon. Friend's sentiments. I am worried about the decision. Obviously such matters are for Royal Mail, but the night mail has long been part of its tradition. I remember the W.H. Auden poem "Night Mail", and I shall read the first few lines:
	"This is the Night Mail crossing the Border,
	Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
	Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
	The shop at the corner, the girl next door."
	There are lots more verses, but I shall leave it at that.
	It was important that Allan Leighton attended the meeting in the House. I hope that he will continually address anxieties that hon. Members of all parties have expressed about the decision.

Lady Hermon: I am sure that the Leader of the House knows that, as part of the recent joint declaration of the British and Irish Governments in Hillsborough, it was agreed to establish a new ceasefire monitoring body. That will require legislative authority. Do the Government intend to introduce a Bill before we rise on 17 July—or perhaps not on 17 July? The right hon. Gentleman should please not be encouraged to go beyond that date, but will he confirm that legislation will be introduced and when that will happen?

Peter Hain: I am grateful for the hon. Lady's support for not going beyond 17 July; I think that view is shared by hon. Members of all parties.
	We are aware of the need for legislation and of the importance of the matter, which will be addressed as soon as it is sensible to do so.

Peter Bradley: Will the Leader of the House arrange to hold a debate on the affairs of Westminster city council, especially its former leader, Dame Shirley Porter? Is he aware of the Law Lords' unanimous judgment two years ago that she was guilty of deliberate, blatant and dishonest abuse of public power, amounting to political corruption? She is subject to a surcharge of £40 million, which increases by £5,000 a day in interest. Westminster city council is currently run by those who were her acolytes when she pursued her reign of terror. So far, they have collected £3,000 and a gold-plated toilet seat. My right hon. Friend will also know that the "Today" programme revealed that she is in contempt of court. A debate would allow the Government to set out the means whereby they intend to bring her to justice, perhaps including extradition from Israel. It would also allow Conservative Members, for the first time in the seven years since she was condemned—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman has had his two penn'orth.

Peter Hain: I am not sure whether there will be an opportunity for a debate or an early statement. However, my hon. Friend has raised an important matter. The district auditor issued a damning report about the behaviour of Dame Shirley Porter, who has parked herself abroad, and the way in which she made it more difficult for Westminster city council and its council tax payers to recover the £40 million. It will have our full support in doing that because the sort of political corruption in which she indulged should not be allowed to go unchecked.

Michael Fallon: Could we have an early debate on the decision to replace the Connex South East rail franchise? Whatever the merits of the decision, will the Leader of the House clarify the way in which hon. Members representing the constituencies affected can properly scrutinise the Strategic Rail Authority's decision-making powers?

Peter Hain: I understand that an Adjournment debate on a related matter will take place next week, so perhaps the point can be raised then. I understand the hon. Gentleman's concerns.

Martin Salter: What provisions are the House of Commons authorities making to respond to threats of civil disobedience, unlawful activity and other stunts by the Countryside Alliance to disrupt the workings of Parliament after the failure of that organisation to convince the House of the case for continuing the practice of hunting with hounds?

Peter Hain: I understand that the police dealt promptly this morning with the matter to which my hon. Friend referred. I understand his concerns, which hon. Members of all parties have expressed, including those about gaining access. Obviously, we need to balance the right to protest with the orderly transaction of business in the House. Those matters will be kept under continual review.

Sydney Chapman: The right hon. Gentleman knows that the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill is being sent back to Committee and that it is being revised. Will he give a categorical assurance that if the revised Bill is sent back to Committee in the second and/or third weeks of September, it will be printed before 17 July?

Peter Hain: I shall look into the matter because I understand the hon. Gentleman's points. I shall get back to him as soon as possible.

Glenda Jackson: When will the House be afforded a debate in Government time on post-conflict Iraq? I am aware of the statement after business questions, but my constituents' concerns are not limited to the humanitarian situation in Iraq, and it is time the House examined in detail what appears to be a marked failure to deliver on the promises to the Iraqi people.

Peter Hain: I know and respect my hon. Friend's close interest in this matter. She referred to the statement that will follow on the humanitarian situation, which is related to her point. And the Foreign Affairs Committee is due to report on general issues next week.

Vincent Cable: May we have a statement from the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry on the deteriorating financial position in the nuclear power industry, and especially on the Government's role in negotiating a contract with the new head of British Energy, which is being bailed out by the taxpayer, that awards him £800,000 if he fails and the company goes into administration? That is completely contrary to Ministers' strictures on fat-cat pay.

Peter Hain: I shall draw the hon. Gentleman's points to the attention of the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry.

Mike Gapes: May we have an early debate on transport in London, and in particular on the Government's attitude to the business case for Crossrail, which I understand is currently being considered by Transport Ministers? Hopefully we shall soon hear an announcement of a decision that is vital to the regeneration of east London and the improvement of east-west transport links in the capital.
	In that context, may I point out that there have been serious problems on the underground this week? There have been staff shortages—I am not sure why—and delays and overcrowding on the Central line. Given the current temperature, that is not at all satisfactory for millions of people in London, including my constituents.

Peter Hain: I sympathise with what my hon. Friend says about the underground, especially in the light of the hot weather. Travelling in crowded trains can be intolerable, and the relevant authorities must deal with the problems.
	I hear muttering from the Opposition Benches. Record amounts are now being invested in rail and underground services, after nearly two decades of persistent underinvestment by the Conservatives. That underinvestment is one of the main reasons why London commuters are having to put up with the present conditions.
	I am well aware of the importance of Crossrail. I believe that nearly £200 million has already been spent on the project, and I hope that it will proceed with all speed.

Nigel Dodds: The Leader of the House will know of the serious breach of patient confidentiality in the Royal group of hospitals in Belfast, where tens of thousands of patients' records have been accessed. The breach of trust is all the worse for having been perpetrated by a terrorist organisation for intelligence-gathering purposes. May we have an early statement from the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland on what he plans to do to restore confidence among the tens of thousands of families who have been affected? He might also give us an update on other intelligence-gathering activities. We have yet to hear any detailed response from the Government on, for instance, the Castlereagh break-in, which occurred on St Patrick's day last year, and the Stormontgate affair.

Peter Hain: I know that the Secretary of State is addressing all those issues with his usual diligence and urgency, but I shall draw his attention to the important matters raised by the hon. Gentleman.

Tony McWalter: It is the role of Members of Parliament to ascertain what difficulties, or even injustices, their constituents are encountering, and to judge the extent to which Government initiatives and activity might correct the position. I congratulate my right hon. Friend on identifying one such problem: a number of my constituents with low incomes are paying the higher tax rate. Has his appetite for initiating debates—which is an important part of the process I have described—been lessened, or will he continue to raise issues which I believe to be of the utmost importance to my constituents?

Hon. Members: Answer!

Peter Hain: I am about to answer.
	I welcome my hon. Friend's generous question. I think that enlightened debate on all matters of Government policy is a good thing.

Julian Brazier: May we have an early debate on the Government's long-delayed fallen stock collection scheme? Against the background of a general crisis in agriculture, on Tuesday it became illegal for farmers to bury dead livestock. Most of the local abattoirs have now closed, and the Government want to close down hunts as well. Will they stop messing about with surveys asking farmers, some of whom do not even have livestock, whether they want a scheme, and get on with introducing one?

Peter Hain: As the hon. Gentleman knows, the matter has been raised on many occasions, but I will certainly remind the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs about it.

Gordon Prentice: On Tuesday we shall have an important debate on foundation hospital trusts, but many aspects of the governance proposals are still very opaque. Must people pay a pound to vote in the election of a board of governors, or must they merely pledge to pay a pound? How big are the catchment areas for specialist hospitals? After hours of debate in Standing Committee, thousands of questions about the trusts remain unanswered. Will the Leader of the House speak to the Secretary of State for Health, and will he produce a memorandum—an explanatory note—about the governance proposals on Monday, before Tuesday's debate?

Peter Hain: I shall certainly inform the Secretary of State of what my hon. Friend has said; but I am sure that my hon. Friend welcomes the speech in which, earlier this week, the Secretary of State spelt out a Labour vision of a national health service free and available to all and receiving record investment—in contrast to the Tory policy of charging, privatisation, cuts and running down the NHS. For that is what the Tories did so effectively, from their own destructive viewpoint, during their many long, bitter years of power.

John Bercow: Given the fulsome tribute that the right hon. Gentleman has paid to his most recent predecessor but one—the right hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook), whose noble attempt to democratise the second Chamber was sabotaged by the rather cackhanded and brutal intervention of the Prime Minister—will he confirm in a statement, very soon, that his own commitment to an elected second Chamber remains absolute? Will he also confirm that he is determined, within the lifetime of this Parliament, to present legislative proposals to allow that objective to be achieved, in the interests of parliamentary legitimacy and democratic scrutiny alike?

Peter Hain: I always enjoy the hon. Gentleman's hyped-up rhetoric. He is very good at it.
	I have paid tribute to my immediate predecessor as well as the most recent but one, who was present earlier.

John Bercow: Less warmly?

Peter Hain: No, equally warmly. He was a very good Leader of the House, albeit briefly.
	As for future legislation, as the hon. Gentleman well knows, he will have to wait for the Queen's Speech to see what transpires.

John Mann: Today the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Home Secretary are citing Sweden as the basis for evidence of why residential rehabilitation for drug addicts under 18 works and should be introduced in this country. I visited Sweden recently. This year, the Swedish Government are reducing such residential rehabilitation by two thirds. Given that inconsistency, will the Leader of the House consider a debate giving the Leader of the Opposition an opportunity to apologise to the Swedish Government and people for so blatantly misrepresenting the Swedish policy?

Peter Hain: Members will have a chance to table questions to the Home Secretary next week, and my hon. Friend will be able to raise the matter then. I pay tribute to the work he has done in his constituency and the lessons he has drawn to the House's attention on tackling the drugs problem, especially in former coalmining areas such as those that he and I represent.
	The policy announced by the Conservatives is a recycled version of a policy that they first announced at their party conference nine months ago. It involves nicking £465 million from the health service budget. The Conservatives are, of course, in a terrible dilemma. They have imposed a policy of 20 per cent. cuts across the board. They are, indeed, cuts addicts—a party that is high on cuts. No one will take their anti-drugs policies seriously until they are prepared to come clean about where their cuts will fall.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I do not like the word "nicking". I am not sure of the implications, but I do not think that the Leader of the House should go too far down that line.

Peter Hain: In that case, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I will say "borrowing from the health budget". The net effect, however, is the same: a cut in overall health spending and a refocusing of that spending, on top of 20 per cent. cuts across the board. Every time the Conservatives announce a new policy—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I hesitate to interrupt the Leader of the House again, but he is not here to answer for Opposition policies.

Bob Spink: May we have a statement on airport development in the south-east, giving Ministers an opportunity to withdraw the now dead-in-the-water and outrageous Cliffe airport proposal, to apologise to the people of Kent and Essex for presenting it in the first place, and to congratulate Members such as my hon. Friends the Members for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois) and for Southend, West (Mr. Amess), who worked together so successfully to ensure that the disastrous scheme was stopped?

Peter Hain: I understand the hon. Gentleman's concern. Whenever there is a proposal for a new airport or an airport extension, there is obviously local concern, but the Government have to address the serious problem of rising demand for air travel and inadequate airport capacity. Either we allow Britain to fall behind, which I am sure he would not want to do, and certainly the Secretary of State for Transport and the Government will not allow to happen, or we must consider all options, and that is exactly what is happening. I have had representations about Severnside airport, for example, suggesting that it could be an alternative to extra capacity in the south-east. The Secretary of State is considering a range of options, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will understand why.

Tom Harris: Will my right hon. Friend arrange for an early debate on the future of NHS Direct, which was described by the National Audit Office as a very safe service and which generated a 97 per cent. satisfaction rate among those who used it? It would also be useful in giving the Conservative party the opportunity to explain, belatedly, its position on NHS Direct and whether it intends to abolish it. That information would be helpful not only to the House but to the 500,000 people who use the service every month.

Peter Hain: Obviously, I will not attempt to answer for the Conservative party, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I can confirm that NHS Direct has been a huge success, with more than 95 per cent. of those who used it registering satisfaction. It has handled more than 18 million calls in the five years since it was established. It would indeed be helpful for the House to know what the Conservatives propose to do with it—and if they abolished it, how they would handle those 18 million inquiries.

Alistair Carmichael: Can we have a debate before the recess on the recent ombudsman's report on the situation at Equitable Life? There cannot be a single Member of the House who does not have some constituents who have been affected. There has been at least negligence on the part of both Equitable Life and the Financial Services Authority—a Government agency—and it is the ordinary policyholders who are supposed to pay. Surely, equity demands that these people should be properly compensated for other people's negligence.

Peter Hain: I fully recognise the legitimate anger that the hon. Gentleman is articulating on behalf of many, many people. The matter must be resolved, and he was absolutely right to raise it in this way.

Andrew Murrison: The chief medical officer has today highlighted the threat posed by West Nile fever. Given the importance that Sir Liam Donaldson attaches to this issue, will the Leader of the House encourage the Health Secretary to make a statement to the House on it, so that it can be properly aired and debated?

Peter Hain: Again, I understand the concern on this matter, and I am sure that my right hon. Friend will take note of the hon. Gentleman's comments, which I will draw to his attention.

John Barrett: Is the Leader of the House aware of answers that I received to parliamentary questions to the Department for Work and Pensions that show that thousands of pensioners in my city of Edinburgh, and tens of thousands throughout the country, are eligible for but not claiming minimum income guarantee, falling below the Government's basic income level? Will he find time for a debate in the House, so that we can discuss how to improve take-up, especially as we will be only a few weeks away from the new pension credit when the House returns?

Peter Hain: As the hon. Gentleman knows, there are lots of opportunities for hon. Members to secure debates on such matters. It is an important subject, and we attach great importance to the minimum income guarantee. For the first time, poor pensioners are being lifted up to around £100 a week, and that gives them some form of security. It is important to ensure better take-up. The Government cannot force people to take advantage of their entitlements, but we continually do more and more to ensure that more and more pensioners realise their rights and the opportunities before them. The pension credit, which as he said, will be introduced in October, is a huge boost for hard-working pensioners who have saved a bit and have a small pension, but not a decent enough one to take them into secure living.

Mark Francois: The Leader of the House invited representations on the issue of hours, so perhaps he will allow me to offer him one. I refer him to early-day motion 607,
	[That this House regrets the revised sitting hours; notes that the business of the House has been adversely affected; and calls for a review of the arrangements.]
	The motion has almost 200 signatories, and I suspect that it would have more if Ministers, many of whom are unhappy with the system themselves, were allowed to sign EDMs. As the Government's principal selling point for the change of hours was that the House would finish regularly at 7 o'clock, and as the past few weeks have patently shown that that is not the case, can the House not vote again on this matter and change its mind?

Peter Hain: The House decided on this matter, even if the hon. Gentleman does not like it.

Eric Forth: For ever?

Peter Hain: No, for the rest of this Parliament, which is exactly the point that I have been making.
	I regard myself as a custodian, along with others, of the decisions of the House. If the hon. Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois) disagrees with our decision, he can mobilise more supporters of his EDM, and no doubt that will form part of the coming debate and the climate in which any future decisions are made after the next general election.

Iraq (Humanitarian Situation)

Hilary Benn: With permission, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I would like to repeat a statement made in another place by my right hon. and noble Friend the Secretary of State for International Development. She was in Iraq last week, in both Basra and Baghdad, and met representatives of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the United Nations, the military, Iraqi administrators, non-governmental organisations and UK civilian staff. She also visited a prison and a water treatment plant in Basra, and the British office in Baghdad.
	Progress has been made in Basra. Days after the end of the conflict, British troops took off their flak jackets and helmets and talked to civilians, which set the tone for a progressive return to normal life, with the military presence now relatively unobtrusive. Life has regained an air of normality: people are out in the streets; the markets sell fruit and vegetables; cars are on the streets; and shops and restaurants are open.
	Quick impact projects, implemented by British forces, together with the UN, NGOs and local authorities, have made a visible difference. Basic services, including water and electricity, have been restored to pre-war levels. The prison has been rehabilitated. The courthouse has been refurbished, and cases are now being heard. Work is under way to clean the city of solid waste and other health hazards. Medical services are functioning, albeit with localised shortages of specialist drugs and oxygen.
	The House will, I am sure, want to pay tribute to UK forces for their very significant contribution, often working in difficult and at times dangerous circumstances, as the tragic deaths of the six Royal Military Police in Maysan last week all too clearly demonstrated.
	The expectations of ordinary Iraqis are very high. The south suffered particular neglect under Saddam's regime, and was starved of investment for years. We need to do better than just restore services to their pre-war levels. People expect and deserve more.
	The situation in Baghdad is more difficult. Threats to security remain a significant obstacle to progress. Regrettably, attacks against the US military by ex-Ba'athists and criminals appear to have become more organised, as has sabotage of newly restored infrastructure, and there are worrying signs of threats to international personnel and Iraqis working with the coalition, which could undermine the developing links between the Coalition Provisional Authority and Iraqi Ministries. Worries over personal safety keep many Iraqis in their homes, rather than at work or school, and impact particularly on women and girls. Cuts in electricity and water supplies also disrupt everyday life. We are working to tackle these.
	Some progress has been made on security: 30,000 Iraqi police officers have reported back for duty, a legal system is beginning to be re-established to control criminality, and the CPA has decided to pay stipends to ex-soldiers, which should help. We are working to put in place the conditions for Iraq to be seen, by its own citizens, to be policing itself rather than being controlled by Coalition forces. We attach a very high priority to the effective reform of the security sector.
	Rapid and visible progress towards fully representative and democratic government is central to the future of Iraq. Iraqis must regain political control of their country as quickly as possible. While Iraqi-controlled local authorities are already working in a number of provincial towns, the process of establishing an Iraqi-led governing council is much more complex. This has to be done quickly, but it also has to be done right. The governing council needs to be representative, involving all the main parties and religious and ethnic groups, as well as providing for the effective involvement of women. The CPA is making progress on developing consensus among Iraqi representatives on the way forward, and importantly, the United Nations is closely involved in the process.
	Much has been made of shortcomings in the CPA. That criticism has in many cases been overstated, but things clearly could improve, and the CPA's leadership, with UK support, is working hard to improve the authority's performance. That includes establishing better communications between headquarters and the regions, and—even more vitally—between the CPA and the Iraqi people. It is essential that the people understand what the CPA is doing and why, and that the CPA can understand their wishes.
	Almost 100 secondees to the CPA from a wide range of UK Government Departments are now in partnership with Iraqi ministries, our US colleagues and the humanitarian agencies, helping to get the Iraqi civil administration back up and running. The Department for International Development now has 27 advisers in Iraq, including the CPA's recently appointed director of operations.
	DFID is also making a substantial financial contribution to humanitarian agencies working on the ground. Our total financial commitment now stands at £154 million, most of which is channelled through organisations with the capacity and expertise to mount humanitarian operations quickly and effectively. I have today placed in the Libraries of both Houses details of the reconstruction work that has been undertaken so far by the agencies that we have been funding.
	We are also working to support the longer-term reconstruction of Iraq. Much of the finance for that will come from Iraq's own oil revenues—initially through the development fund for Iraq, and subsequently through Iraq's own budget—but the international community also has an important role to play. In New York last week, informal meetings, which included Iraqi representatives, began preparations for a donors conference that is expected to take place in October. Details were also agreed on the assessment that the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations will carry out in the intervening months. DFID will consider how best we can contribute to that longer-term reconstruction effort in the light of this work.
	Years of sanctions and mismanagement by the Saddam regime have left the Iraqi economy very weak. Even before the conflict, only about half of the Iraqi work force were in full-time employment. Iraq's oil wealth and its relatively well-educated population should enable it to grow rapidly, once security has stabilised and a representative government are in place who can take long-term economic policy decisions.
	Humanitarian agencies, with our support, returned to Iraq quickly after the conflict ended and have helped the country to recover from that conflict and the subsequent looting. The ability to do so was strengthened by good preparatory work, in part financed by DFID, and supported by our armed forces. But continued threats to security, particularly in Baghdad, remain a very significant constraint. The coalition is working urgently to address that in order to build on the progress achieved so far, and to make real, lasting and visible improvements to the lives of the Iraqi people.
	Following her visit, the Secretary of State is urgently discussing with the Prime Minister and Cabinet colleagues what more we need to do to address the key priorities on the ground. We will continue to keep the House fully informed.

Caroline Spelman: Does the statement's sanitised description of life returning to normal really match the reality for ordinary Iraqis? And why is there no apology for the failure to plan properly? On 3 February, the Prime Minister pledged to Members of this House that there would be
	"a humanitarian plan that is every bit as viable and well worked out as a military plan."—[Official Report, 3 February 2003; Vol. 399, c. 36.]
	But on Monday, the Secretary of State admitted before the International Development Committee that the planning was poor. I understand that in the statement that has just been given in another place, the Secretary of State—how we wish, with no disrespect to the Minister, that she was in this House—said that she blames the chaos mainly on looting, which she said was impossible to predict. Since when, in the aftermath of a war, has looting been impossible to predict? The Secretary of State also denied that the Government were unprepared.
	The director of Save the Children said in his evidence to the Select Committee:
	"We were told that as much priority would be given to the humanitarian dimension as to the others. That could not have been the case, given where we have ended up."
	So what confidence can the public now have in the Prime Minister's assurances? Why do the Government appear to be responding to events, rather than anticipating them? And where is the road map to a stable and secure, self-governing Iraq?
	There are humanitarian problems, and it is the serious lack of security that is hampering attempts to return life to normal. Women and children do not feel safe on the streets. People are being forced to drink dirty water because water facilities have been sabotaged. Electricity is still intermittent, hospitals are still short of drugs and people are being operated on without anaesthetic. Yet all that we heard in the statement is that there are "localised shortages".
	Can the Minister set out now how the Government hope to mange security in Iraq? Do we need more troops; did our Government support the de-mobbing of the Iraqi army; and what does the coalition plan for ex-soldiers, beyond the provision of a stipend? The visible presence of coalition troops on the main roads may give the impression of security, but the side-streets are still haunted by the shadow of Saddam Hussein and his Ba'athist militia. And what of the new threat of 10,000 Iranian-trained Shi'a militia, who are increasingly militant?
	What matters from now on is that there is a clear, well-defined road map for how to get from occupation to Iraqi self-government, which needs to be laid out and shared with the Iraqi people. The Minister said that we need to communicate much more clearly to the Iraqi people what our intentions are. Will he set out how he intends to improve communications with ordinary Iraqis? How much money does the coalition administration need to run the country, and what is the strategy for raising it? He said that much will come from oil revenues, so why are there reported plans to sell off Iraqi national assets? Would this even be legal?
	This statement does not reassure us that there is a clear plan for securing the future of Iraq. Although the Minister acknowledges that security is a problem, he does not say how it will be addressed. He says that Iraqis should run Iraq, but he does not say when or how this will take place. Aspirations are no substitute for a clear strategy. Does this not leave the UK's armed forces in an increasingly invidious position?
	Yesterday, the nation paid respect to the six gallant men of the Royal Military Police, and we do pay tribute to all of our armed forces. [Interruption.]

Tam Dalyell: You all voted for the war.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order.

Caroline Spelman: But if we are to continue to risk our soldier's lives to prevent terrorists and weapons-proliferators from threatening us from that land again, why is there still no clear plan that can show how to bring peace and security to Iraq?

Hilary Benn: I am sorry that the hon. Lady began her comments by referring to my statement as a sanitised version. I do not accept that description at all; indeed, I regard it as a balanced account of the difficult situation that exists in Iraq, but which also recognises that progress has been made since the end of the conflict.
	The hon. Lady makes a very fair point about the question of planning. As she will be aware, DFID, the UN and other agencies made considerable preparations for a range of eventualities, including the possibility of prolonged urban warfare, large-scale movement of the population and considerable disruption to the infrastructure, which in the end—thank goodness—did not transpire. That is one reason why the UN and other agencies, with financial support from DFID, were able to get up and running relatively quickly.
	The truth is that we then found ourselves dealing with a different set of challenges as a result of the swift collapse of the regime: looting, and the subsequent initial breakdown in public services. The House needs to recognise and acknowledge that in a society on which the lid was kept for 25 years by fear and terror, a very different approach is required, particularly to policing, to which I shall return in a moment.
	In this case, the sensible action for DFID to take was to fund the agencies on the ground and support the reconstruction work. As I said, I have put the details in the Library today. What matters is not whose flag is on the activity, but whether the work gets done.
	The hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) asked specific questions about the water supply. Our funding has helped to pay for repairs to 40 sewage pumping stations across Iraq and for the delivery of drugs and medical supplies to 11 hospitals, 15 health centres and 37 clinics—part of an attempt to get the drug distribution system in Iraq back up and running. Those who visited Iraq and reported what they found told us that part of the problem was an ineffective distribution system to get the supplies from where they are held in warehouses to where they need to go. That is why the Department funds the distribution system. In many respects, the position has improved. Food distribution, for example, is working again. Of course lessons are to be learned from the process, but the most important consideration now is to get on with the task of reconstruction.
	The hon. Lady also asked about the political process. She is absolutely right that, to complement the work on security, we need to get the political process working. As she knows, that is a twin-track process. We first set up a governing council that is broadly based and representative. Sergio de Mello, the UN Secretary-General's special representative, will report to the Security Council when the council has been established, after which it will appoint Iraqi Ministers. The second track is to set up the preparatory commission, whose job will be to provide a timetable for the constitutional process that will eventually lead to elections and Iraqi self-government. I accept that that is important, but it is for the commission to decide—[Interruption.] It is not for us or the hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) to decide the timetable. The governing council wants it to happen during the course of this month. It must indeed be an Iraqi-owned process.
	Finally, on policing, 30,000 Iraqi police are now back at work. As the hon. Lady will be aware, joint patrols have been stepped up and the chief constable of Hampshire led a team and produced a report on security sector and policing reform, which is now being taken forward by the CPA. The hon. Lady is absolutely right and we agree that security is the foundation on which the reconstruction of Iraq will be achieved.

Alice Mahon: It is absolutely clear to everyone that there was no coherent plan to deal with what is currently happening. The attacks on US troops are seriously worrying. We have heard warnings from two ayatollahs, one of whom issued a fatwa opposing the US plan for choosing who should rule Iraq, because Iraqis should themselves be able to choose. I have spoken to two soldiers who have returned from Basra and been debriefed. Their message to me was that the Iraqi people do not want us there. The Iraqis are utterly bitter about the number of civilians—now estimated at 7,000—who have been killed, with a further 15,000 having been injured. Is it not time for the full involvement of the UN? It is now for the UN to come up with a plan to take over the organisation of elections, which should be solely for the Iraqi people.

Hilary Benn: I do not accept my hon. Friend's description of an absence of preparation, and the whole House acknowledges the extent of the difficulties that we face. The whole House also fully understands the desire of the people of Iraq to speed up the process that will allow them to take decisions about the future of their country. If we had not taken action, we would not be having this discussion about the possibility of a new future for Iraq, a constitutional process and a governing council, because Saddam Hussein would still be in power. We should acknowledge that fact. Whatever people say about the difficulties in which Iraq currently finds itself, very few wish for the return of Saddam. That should be acknowledged as a starting-point within the process. I nevertheless accept the spirit of what my hon. Friend says about the need for the process to proceed speedily. I accept her point about UN involvement, which is why Sergio de Mello's contribution to overseeing the process of political reconstruction is so important.

Jenny Tonge: I thank the Minister for the statement, even though it was second hand. I share the doubts expressed by the hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) about the Secretary of State's assessment, following a two-day whistlestop tour of the country, of the position in Iraq. I happily acknowledge, however, that progress has been made in Basra, mainly because of our own armed forces. I saw at first hand in Kosovo how hard our soldiers work to restore services and the whole House should congratulate them on their work in the south of Iraq.
	As we have heard, the real position in Iraq is much worse, and it is difficult for those who were against the rush to war from the very beginning not to say, "I told you so". It is all very well for the official Opposition to complain about the lack of progress to date, but, as the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) said, they voted for it all so they must accept the consequences.
	The key to reconstruction, as everyone accepts, is security and the establishment of the rule of law. How long do the Iraqi people have to wait for sufficient peacekeepers to bring law and order to their land? The Iraqi people do not trust many of the civilian police. Is it not time for the UN to take over the security function and the building of a civilian Government who will have the respect of the Iraqi people?
	When will water and electricity supplies be reliable enough for hospitals to function, and when will those same hospitals become secure enough to be administered under proper management, with proper equipment? Will the Minister comment on the incidence of cholera in Iraq, and on the very disturbing reports, following the looting of the nuclear plant, of radiation sickness among Iraqi people? When will criminal and religious violence against women be controlled, and how many women will be in the governing council of Iraq? Will the Minister also tell us how Iraq's enormous debt is to be dealt with?
	Finally, does the Minister agree that the chaos and suffering in Iraq, following the reckless rush to war, was—as suggested by the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short) in a written statement on 13 March—due to insufficient planning by the US?

Hilary Benn: I do not accept the hon. Lady's last point, but I thank her for her acknowledgement of the contribution of UK forces, which is felt throughout the House. She is absolutely right about the primacy of security and the rule of law. Clearly, the release of 75,000 criminals has not helped, and I described earlier the steps taken by the CPA to deal with the problem.
	Hindsight is a wonderful thing, particularly among those who opposed the action in the first place. [Interruption.] I repeat that, if Saddam was still in control, we would not be having this discussion about the possibility of a new future for Iraq. Let us all recognise the importance of the achievement in removing him. The key point is that this is a very difficult task, and those who tap their watches and ask why it has not been done yet fail to understand the scale of that task. We are dealing with the consequences not of three weeks of conflict, but of 25 years of destruction of the country's politics and culture. That is what created the difficulties with which we now have to deal.
	The hon. Lady asked about the cholera outbreak. There was an outbreak, but it has been managed and, thankfully, no deaths have been reported. It was a matter of considerable concern, but the system has responded reasonably effectively to it.
	I concur with the hon. Lady about the importance of women's involvement in the political process. She will be aware of the meeting that took place in May in preparation for the women's conference planned for later this month. The British Government continue to press strongly for the view that the position of women should play its proper part in the governance of Iraq—though, in the end, it is for the Iraqi people to determine under the new structures.
	On debt, the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Dr. Tonge) will be aware that the Paris Club has indicated its willingness to look at Iraq's sovereign debts. The assessment being made by the IMF, the World Bank and the UN will feed into the donors conference in October. That will give us the opportunity to take a wider and longer-term view of the debt position in Iraq.

Joan Ruddock: My hon. Friend the Minister was just asked about the civil nuclear facility at al-Tuwaitha. I want to follow up on that question, as 500 radioactive barrels were looted from that site, and used by local villagers for water storage. Is he aware that the US is offering only $3 for each returned barrel, whereas a new barrel costs $15? Will he congratulate Greenpeace, which is collecting contaminated barrels and giving out new ones free? Equally importantly, or even more so, will he press for the International Atomic Energy Agency to be given the full mandate that it is seeking to tackle this serious humanitarian and radiological crisis?

Hilary Benn: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question, and I apologise to the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Dr. Tonge) for not responding to her point on the same issue. The House will be aware of the reports that the population in the area of the al-Tuwaitha nuclear facility had taken drums and containers and that they had emptied low-enriched uranium from them and taken them off for use as water storage. I was not aware of the steps being taken by Greenpeace, although it sounds like a commendable initiative.
	To date, the World Health Organisation has not received any reports of suspected radiation sickness in local hospitals, although it has received reports of possible exposure to risk. Consequently, it has sent a team to the area to assess local health facilities and patterns of admission, and whether there have been any reported cases of exposure locally. It would be sensible to reflect on what that teams report, but I shall bear in mind the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock).

George Young: I recognise that real progress has been made in difficult circumstances, but is not it worrying that the mood of the average man in the street seems to be changing? It has gone from relief to disillusionment and now—worryingly—to resentment. Will the Minister share with the House the strategy that exists to win back the hearts and minds of ordinary people in Iraq?

Hilary Benn: I accept the right hon. Gentleman's point. Two things need to be done: we must make progress on security and get the political process moving as quickly as possible. There has to be clarity about the timetable, as the hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) noted earlier. Improving people's day-to-day lives and providing clarity about how long it will take for the Iraqi people to have the chance to take decisions about their country's future are the best things that we can do. We must continue to work hard at that to overcome the frustration that of course people feel. There is a great wish, especially after 25 years of trauma, to get on with establishing a new future for the country. The responsibility on the coalition is to make sure that those two things can be achieved.

Tam Dalyell: The hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) spoke gently and politely, but I have seldom been so angry with an Opposition statement. What on earth did the Opposition think would happen? The shadow Foreign Secretary and the shadow Defence Secretary goaded the Government into this folly. You are all in it together—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is a long-standing Member of the House. He knows that he must direct his questions and remarks to the Minister who is making the statement to the House today.

Tam Dalyell: My question is very precise. It concerns British troops. The first wave became gradually acclimatised, and that is all very well, but we are now sending members of the services straight into the sweltering heat of Basra, where temperatures reach 52 degrees. Given the security position in which our forces find themselves, how on earth can they be expected to keep their cool throughout? We are asking a heck of a lot of the Army. I ask the same question as my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon): for how long do we delay bringing in the UN? The right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) is right to say that things are turning sour. People are moving from acceptance to outright hostility. Our forces are seen more and more as an occupying army, and not as a liberating army. We ought to understand the consequences of that.

Hilary Benn: My hon. Friend will be aware that there is agreement across the House on the need to make progress as quickly as possible to address the points that he raises. He asks specifically about how the British forces who will be arriving in Iraq shortly are meant to cope. My answer is, simply, that I would expect them to cope with exactly the same professionalism and dedication to their duties as those who will leave shortly have demonstrated. As I think all hon. Members will recognise, their work has made a great contribution to the improvement that has taken place, especially in the south and particularly in Basra.

Michael Portillo: Does the Minister recall that on 4 June the Prime Minister crowed to this House that those who said that Iraq might turn out to be his Vietnam had been proved wrong? Given the continuing level of allied casualties, would not the Prime Minister have shown less hubris if he had simply said that he did not know what lay ahead in Iraq, but that he would be resolute in seeing the task through to the end?

Hilary Benn: We certainly do need to be resolute and to see the task through to the end. I believe that those who choose to make analogies with Vietnam are mistaken, principally because the starting point was the overthrow of Saddam's regime. A majority in the House voted for that, although I recognise that there are hon. Members who did not support the decision. I repeat that we would not be having this discussion about a new future for Iraq if the action had not been taken, but the scale of the task facing us is very considerable. We owe it to the people of Iraq to see it through.

Harry Barnes: Rebuilding Iraq and establishing democracy there would be greatly facilitated if the UN were in charge, but will my hon. Friend say what role the new and developing free trade union movement will play? Trade unionists are united by common interests, rather than being divided into sectarian and ethnic groups. They will form the bulk of voters in a new Iraq, and they will also be the workers who will accomplish the reconstruction and rebuilding of the country. If the unions are to have a role, what will be the attitude of the US towards them?

Hilary Benn: The UN plays a very important role in the political process, particularly because resolution 1483 has given Sergio de Mello special responsibility for overseeing the establishment of the political process. His contribution and report to the Security Council on that process will be very important in taking the matter forward. I agree about the importance of supporting the establishment, in all aspects of Iraqi life, of the institutions of a functioning democracy. The trade union movement has suffered enormously, and the Government certainly wish to encourage that and other aspects of civil society. They will all contribute to the process of enabling the new democracy to be more than just a constitution and words on a document. We want it to be a living and breathing entity that enables the Iraqi people, over time, to take control of the destiny of their country.

Martin Smyth: I may be accused of benefiting from hindsight, but the Minister will accept that at an early stage I expressed concern about the consequences of the war. Does he agree that searches need to be conducted sensitively, especially when men burst into houses in which women have normally been sheltered? We must understand the views on Islam on that issue. When the Minister spoke about there being three months before the donor countries conference is held, I could not help but think that that was a bit like the waiting lists in the health service. Given the magnitude of the task they face, is it not possible to call the countries together sooner, so that they can start their planning earlier?

Hilary Benn: On the hon. Gentleman's first point, he is right about the importance of being sensitive to local culture and custom. I know that UK forces are acutely aware of the need for that sensitivity, and it is something that they hold dear to their hearts when they carry out their work.
	On the hon. Gentleman's second point, we have already made progress on bringing the donors together for the UN flash appeal. A further meeting was held in New York last week, which included representatives from Iraq who discussed what they felt would be needed for the future of the country. That has brought forth additional funds to support the money that has already been pledged. It is right that we should allow the World Bank, the IMF and the UN to make the detailed assessments. In one sense, three months is a long time, but we are talking about long-term reconstruction, so it is right that we should give them the chance to do that work as we shall have a more informed donors conference in October once that work has been completed.

Lynne Jones: I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon) that any objective observer must conclude that there was a near total lack of preparation for the post-war needs of Iraqi society. However, I also agree with the Minister when he says that we need to do more than restore services to pre-war levels. When will services be restored to even those minimal levels, to cater for humanitarian needs and, for example, broadcasting and communication? What action is being taken to distinguish between those Ba'athists who are loyal to Saddam Hussein and those who joined the Ba'ath party only from expediency, who do not have a record of corruption and abuse and can, therefore, contribute to the reconstruction of Iraq?

Hilary Benn: In answer to my hon. Friend's first question, progress has been made in Basra in reaching pre-war levels with, for example, the electricity supply, although we need to go further. In Baghdad, progress had been made but the situation worsened last week as a result of acts of sabotage, which reinforces the point about security. A lot of money, investment, time and effort have gone into restoring the electricity supply and some people are setting out to undermine that. We have to deal with that problem to ensure that the electricity supply is constant, because people need it; it is needed to pump the sewerage system and so on.
	My hon. Friend's second point, about de-Ba'athification, is important. It is vital that those who played a leading role in the old regime, and all that flowed from that, should be removed from their positions but, at the same time, the de-Ba'athification policy should be sensibly applied because we need to ensure that services can continue to function. The CPA is extremely conscious of the position and needs to reflect on it as it takes the process forward.

Adam Price: In his statement, the Minister stressed the importance of Iraq being seen to be policing itself rather than being controlled by coalition forces. How does he square that with the comments made by Mr. Paul Bremer on Sunday? Mr. Bremer said that
	"we will continue to impose law and order and impose our will on this country".
	Does the Minister believe that somebody capable of making such clearly inflammatory remarks is fit to lead the civilian administration in Iraq? Is not the gung-ho approach of the Americans, reflected in that statement, becoming the major obstacle to efforts to achieve security in the region? Is not it time to get the US out and the UN in?

Hilary Benn: I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman, for the simple reason that, reflecting on the contributions that we have already heard in response to the statement, the overwhelming message has been the importance of security and law and order. Paul Bremer was saying that that, too, is the coalition's priority. The people of Iraq are looking for reassurance that there is the commitment and the will to ensure that security is provided. In part, that is about the work of the coalition forces, but at the same time we must build the capacity of the Iraqi police force; 30,000 of them have returned to work and are being paid twice what they received when Saddam Hussein was in power. We also need to train them, because the type of policing that is required in a country that is heading towards a different and democratic future is very different from the type of policing that one can get away with in a country where order is maintained by fear and terror.

Glenda Jackson: I pay tribute to the sterling work being done by British troops in Basra and I was interested to hear about the clean-up process. What priority is being given to cleaning up unexploded armaments, most markedly the unexploded bomblets from cluster bombs?
	With regard to the interim council that is to be created in Iraq, who will have the last word about who will be the representatives of the Iraqi people? Will it be Mr. Bremer or the UN representative? Surely the UN should be in the driving seat during the first step of recreating some kind of democracy in Iraq.

Hilary Benn: My hon. Friend raises an important point about mines and unexploded ordnance. The matter is of grave concern, not only because of those that are to be found following the three-week conflict but because of other unexploded ordnance that is to be found across Iraq from conflicts dating back over a long period. That is why some of DFID's work has been to fund the UN Mine Action Service and the Mines Advisory Group, which is working with both the coalition and local organisations to plot the location of unexploded ordnance and then to carry out disposals.
	On my hon. Friend's second question, the process is one of discussion and dialogue between the CPA, those who will serve on the governing council and Sergio de Mello, the UN representative. That is why, when answering the question put by my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Derbyshire (Mr. Barnes), I drew attention to the especially important role that Sergio de Mello will play as the guardian, under resolution 1483, of the responsibility for overseeing the transfer to the new political process. It is important that he is happy with, and supportive of, that process as we take it forward.

Norman Lamb: Further to the issue of unexploded bomblets, can the Minister tell us what assessment has been made of their total number following the conflict and precisely what progress has been made in clearing them? How many civilian deaths and other casualties have resulted from those that remain? Does the Minister agree that the presence of unexploded munitions represents an additional lethal ingredient in an already highly volatile situation?

Hilary Benn: I accept that unexploded ordnance is a serious problem. To answer the hon. Gentleman's question about an assessment of the total amount of unexploded ordnance, my understanding is that, because the plotting process is continuing, by definition that information is not currently available. However, I shall make further inquiries and if I can provide the hon. Gentleman with further information, I shall write to him.

Paul Marsden: As one of the two occupying powers, the British Government are responsible for the welfare of the Iraqi population, so will the Minister make a more detailed statement about the provision of clean, fresh water? From the list in the Library that he provided, it would appear that only £4 million of the £100.4 million that the British Government are pledging is being spent on water and sanitation. UNICEF and the International Committee of the Red Cross report an increased spread of diarrhoea, which is taking its toll, especially on the children of Iraq. One in eight children does not even reach the age of eight because they are dying from such diseases, so when will we see real action?

Hilary Benn: Obviously, I accept the hon. Gentleman's point about the importance of water, but I do not accept his suggestion that no real action has been taken. Maintaining clean water supplies has been a primary and principal concern of ourselves, the ICRC and the UK military, in particular, who have done excellent work to repair water and sanitation facilities and build a supply line. The UN has been tankering 800,000 litres of clean water a day to the deprived areas of Baghdad and the south, so it is simply not true to say that nothing is being done. The situation is improving in parts of the country, including Basra, Kirkuk and Mosul. Baghdad's water supply system is operating at about 80 per cent. capacity, although it, too, was affected last week by the act of sabotage to the electricity system.

Vincent Cable: On long-term reconstruction, what discussions has the Minister had with his American opposite numbers on their proposal to use future oil export revenue as collateral to enable American exporters to export through the US import ban? Is that not wholly contrary to the assurances that oil export revenue would be used exclusively for the benefit of the people of Iraq?

Hilary Benn: The answer to the hon. Gentleman's question is that I have had no such discussions with my American counterparts.

Points of Order

Eleanor Laing: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Have you had an indication that the Secretary of State for Health wishes to come to the House to apologise for remarks that he has been reported as having made in today's Daily Mail? It is reported that he has told the Minister for Children, whom I have criticised for her failure to protect vulnerable children when she was leader of Islington council:
	"The only reason the Tories are getting so het up about you is that they were all abused as children."
	That is, at best, tasteless and, at worst, despicable. I understand that my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State for Health—[Interruption.] I do not know why hon. Members are shouting at me; this is a very serious matter. I understand that my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State for Health has written to the Secretary of State about this. If the Secretary of State for Health meant that point to be serious, I strongly object, on a personal level, and I ask for an apology. However, if he intended it as a joke—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Lady is developing this into a debate. I can deal with the point of order that she has raised. She asks whether I have had any notification that the Secretary of State for Health plans to make a statement to the House, and my answer is that I know nothing of that.

Edward Garnier: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Many hon. Members will have been interested in the Retirement Income Reform Bill, which I am conducting through the House. Owing to a misprint in the Order Paper, its remaining stages are listed for tomorrow—4 July—but the true position is that it will be considered on Report on 11 July. So I would not want hon. Members to come to the House tomorrow, expecting an exciting time, when they will have to wait until next Friday for that treat.
	May I take this opportunity to deal with an issue in relation to the Hunting Bill, which is currently back in Standing Committee? I do not want to open up the arguments about the merits or demerits of the Government's case on hunting, but to draw to the attention of the House and ask your advice about, Mr. Deputy Speaker, the wider abuse of the parliamentary process. Clearly, what is going on Upstairs is not a technical abuse because the House can order its affairs in the way that it chooses, and it has done so, but we are having to deal with a completely rewritten Bill. The Bill that we are discussing Upstairs has very little to do with the Bill that the House considered on Second Reading or in Committee earlier. I accept that the arithmetic—[Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I can deal with both points of order that the hon. and learned Gentleman has raised. I shall take them in reverse order. On the second point, issues relating to that Committee are entirely matters for its Chairman and nothing whatsoever to do with me, as occupant of the Chair. On the first point, owing to an administrative error, the Retirement Income Reform Bill was placed in the future business for consideration on Friday 4 July, as he said. It should have been placed in the future business for Friday 11 July, as item 4, after consideration of the Female Genital Mutilation Bill. The future business will be corrected in tomorrow's Order Paper. The Votes and Proceedings correctly state that the Bill is to be considered on Friday 11 July.

Colin Challen: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. During the debate on the Hunting Bill on Monday afternoon, the official Opposition spokesman—he was pressed several times on this—said that the Hunting Bill was a waste of parliamentary time. In fact, he also said:
	"It is a total and utter waste of time."—[Official Report, 30 June 2003; Vol. 408, c. 74.]
	Yet we read in the Financial Times yesterday, the day after debate, that
	"the opposition said a future Conservative government would make the parliamentary time available to overturn the ban."
	May I ask you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, whether it is incumbent on official Opposition spokespeople not to dissemble in front of Members or misrepresent their position, or to mislead Members?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I suspect that the issues that the hon. Gentleman raises are matters for debate, both inside and outside the House, and are therefore not matters for the Chair.

Paul Marsden: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. In the statement on Iraq, the Minister of State for International Development said, "I have today placed in the Libraries of both Houses details of the reconstruction work being undertaken in Iraq." When I checked, the Library had not received that list, and it was only on my prompting that it contacted the Department and received it. May I ask—through you, Mr. Deputy Speaker—whether Ministers could be a little more prompt and, when they say that they will place documents in the Library, they do so?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Gentleman has made the point for himself.

BILL PRESENTED

National Minimum Wage (Amendment) Bill

Mr. Michael Connarty, supported by Jim Dobbin, John Robertson, Mr. Dennis Skinner, Vera Baird, Mrs. Anne Campbell, Mr. Parmjit Dhanda, Mr. Bill Tynan, Mr. Jimmy Hood, Linda Gilroy, Mr. Bob Blizzard and Angela Eagle, presented a Bill to amend the National Minimum Wage Act 1998 and the National Minimum Wage Regulations 1999 to exclude tip gratuities from the calculation of wages and salaries; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 11 July, and to be printed. [Bill 138].

Intelligence and Security Committee

Motion made and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Jim Murphy.]

Denis MacShane: I begin by offering the apologies of my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, who has just returned from a trip. He and his team must have ingested something because they have all been ordered to their beds. I am sure that my right hon. Friend will be back on his feet soon. Of course, he regrets his absence, because, as the House will agree, reporting to Parliament is something that he takes very seriously indeed.
	I will ask you for your forbearance, Mr. Deputy Speaker, if I am not here for the completion of the debate because I am expected in Gibraltar later this evening, to carry out ministerial duties.
	The debate is an opportunity for the House to review the performance of one of our most important Committees and a chance to measure the Government's performance against perhaps the most critical yardstick of all—the extent to which we are protecting the lives of our citizens both at home and overseas. That subject has always been a matter for serious discussion, but its prominence has increased exponentially since 11 September 2001, when our values—the values of liberal democracy—suffered one of their most grievous assaults in memory. That day brought a dreadful new resonance to threats to national security, which have been with us for many years. Fears about the uncontrolled spread of weapons of mass destruction have haunted humankind for over half a century. Terrorism has blighted the lives of millions, not least the British people, for years.
	What makes the situation today truly unprecedented is that our long battle against those threats has reached a turning point. In one direction lies a new global consensus against the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and an unyielding international commitment to the defeat of terrorism and the treatment of its causes. In the other direction, if we do not take action, lies a world where the forces of chaos become ascendant and where future generations have to live with the day-to-day possibility that terrorists may use nerve agents or even nuclear materials to inflict slaughter on an unimaginable scale.
	This year's annual report by the Intelligence and Security Committee reflects that grave new environment. Before I examine its conclusions and recommendations, I pay tribute to the work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Ann Taylor) and her fellow members of the Committee, many of whom are present in the House today. The ISC plays a vital role in holding to account the agencies and the Ministers who are responsible for them. The Chairman and her colleagues have performed that task with distinction during the past 12 months. Having given oral evidence to the ISC for the past six years, as both Home Secretary and in his current post, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary can personally testify to the integrity and rigour that former and current members of the Committee bring to their work. The fact that Ministers from four Departments provided evidence to the Committee this year indicates the value that the Government attach to the ISC's role.
	The Intelligence and Security Committee helps to make the UK's system of oversight for the intelligence and security agencies what it is: the most comprehensive such system in the democratic world. By the standards of most, if not all, of the world's democracies, the ISC is able to subject those agencies to intense scrutiny. To have managed that without reducing the effectiveness of our intelligence services has been a remarkable achievement.

Alan Beith: I am grateful to the Minister, not least for his very kind comments, but he slightly overstates the case in relation to the United States, where congressional intelligence committees have responsibility for the appropriations, thus the funding of the bodies, so the description that he gave might be misleading. Nevertheless, our experience is that the system that we have developed is much admired in much of the rest of the democratic world.

Denis MacShane: I think that that is right. The Prime Minister appears in front of the Committee, and he will appear before the Liaison Committee next week and can answer any questions that hon. Gentlemen wish to put to him, which is not an experience that the President of the United States has to go through.

Andrew MacKinlay: As the issue has been opened up by one of the members of the Intelligence and Security Committee, can my hon. Friend share with us an example of one other democracy in which the oversight committee is selected by the Head of Government?

Denis MacShane: I think that very few other democracies have such an oversight committee.
	I welcome the recognition in the Committee's report of the work of the agencies in protecting national security. I have been deeply impressed with the professionalism and courage shown by their staff and I know that many officers work in the most dangerous and stressful circumstances imaginable. Their dedication to public service is therefore all the more laudable. We should recall that the nature of the agencies' work means that they rarely if ever receive praise for their efforts. I will not set out an exhaustive list of their recent achievements this afternoon, but I am sure that the House will join me in praising their integral role in support of British troops in Iraq. GCHQ supported at the strategic and tactical levels of command in its largest operation since world war two.
	One of the harsh truths about intelligence work is that despite our best efforts we will never have advance notice of every potential terrorist act on our interests. That is a lesson that we have had to absorb in Northern Ireland over many years. In the past nine months we have had terrible reminders in Bali and Saudi Arabia of that truth. Many of the families of the British victims of the Bali atrocity will be in London today and tomorrow to attend the public inquest into it and I know that the entire House will join me in extending our sympathies to them at this distressing time. In the period following the incident in Bali, the agony of those who had lost loved ones was compounded by the speculation that the Government could have done more. In particular, there were allegations that we did not act on specific intelligence pointing towards an attack in Bali, and failed to inform the public of the dangers in advance.
	It was for that reason that in a statement to the House on 21 October, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary commissioned a review by the ISC of the Government's handling of the intelligence in the run-up to the Bali atrocity. On 3 March, the House had an opportunity to debate the Committee's findings. I reiterate today my welcome of its central conclusion: that on the basis of the available intelligence, there was no action that the UK or our allies could have taken to prevent the attack.
	That said, the Committee did identify several areas for improvement, including in respect of the threat assessment system. We have reworked that system and have established a joint terrorism analysis centre—JTAC—and that multi-agency body launched on 2 June has developed rapidly with the support of Ministers, the Joint Intelligence Committee, the intelligence services and the relevant Departments. JTAC will be responsible for the long-term strategic assessment of the terrorist threat as well as the day-to-day response to specific intelligence.

Julian Lewis: While we welcome this improved co-ordination among the intelligence agencies, can the Minister tell the House why the Government have been resisting our recommendation that such co-ordination should be carried on at ministerial level, too, and that the Government should appoint a dedicated Minister devoting his or her entire time to co-ordinating the various Ministries in precisely the same way that the agencies are now correctly being co-ordinated?

Denis MacShane: I will return to the point of ministerial oversight later in my speech.
	In response to some of the other recommendations from the ISC in respect of Bali, I am pleased to tell the House that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has made extensive improvements to its travel advice service. We have now put in place arrangements to guarantee that travel advice for every country is reviewed at least once a month, and that each new piece of advice is checked for clarity, consistency and accuracy before publication. The FCO has also taken steps to ensure that it can respond quickly to major attacks on our interests overseas. We have established three rapid deployment teams, which can be despatched to the scene of any incident within 24 hours. We used one of the teams recently in the aftermath of the terrorist bombing in Saudi Arabia. Each team is led by a senior diplomatic officer and will combine a mixture of skills, including consular experience. We continue to look hard at the structure of our response in London to see if that too can be further improved.
	As well as Bali, the ISC's annual report includes a number of conclusions and recommendations for the future conduct of work by the intelligence agencies and the Security Service. The official response published by the Government on 19 June deals with each of those. I will not repeat all of that material in my remarks today, but let me focus on just three of the most serious issues: first, Iraq; secondly, the role of Ministers in the management of intelligence services; and thirdly, ministerial involvement in counter-proliferation policy.
	First, on Iraq, I welcome the fact that the ISC will be conducting an inquiry into the role of intelligence in determining the Government's policy last year and in the run-up to military action. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has already announced that he will see the Committee, and my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary will give evidence on 16 July. The Committee will also hear evidence from the heads of the intelligence agencies and the chairman of the JIC. The Committee will have access to the key documents that underpinned the judgments reached in the dossier that the Government published on 24 September. We can expect them to pursue their investigation with the same degree of rigour and probity as was so evident during their inquiries into the Bali incident and the Mitrokhin archive.
	The second issue that I would single out from the ISC's annual report is the role of Ministers in the management of the intelligence services. Over the past year, the Committee has conducted a full inquiry into the national intelligence machinery, examining who collects, analyses and assesses intelligence material. It is encouraging that the Committee did not identify any significant structural problems of gaps or duplication. The report, however, has noted that the ministerial committee on the intelligence services—the CSI—has not met and that Ministers should be more involved in longer-term strategic issues relating to the agencies.
	I fully accept that the CSI has an important role to play in the setting of resources and priorities for the intelligence services, and that it should meet to consider that work. The fact that it has not yet done so does not mean that the agencies have been operating in a vacuum—far from it. The Prime Minister receives regular reports from the heads of the agencies, and both the Foreign Secretary and the Home Secretary are apprised of the agencies' work on a regular basis.

Tam Dalyell: What does the Minister think induced Vice-Admiral Sir Louis Le Bailly, who was vice-chairman of the JIC from 1972 to 1975, to write in The Times yesterday:
	"It follows, if this vital tradition it to be maintained, that the JIC, which looks at all the facts often in all their bleakness and transmits them to those the electors have temporarily lent the power to govern, must never be used as a political instrument and must never be referred to as "the Government's JIC"?
	Why does he think that Sir Louis wrote that? Ought it not be rebutted?

Denis MacShane: I believe he wrote that because some people have made allegations, but they have been dealt with by the Foreign Affairs Committee and much discussed in the House, and we now know those allegations to be false.

Simon Hughes: The Government have consistently resisted the argument that there ought to be specific ministerial oversight. The Committee, however, has recommended on several occasions that the existing CSI, chaired by the Prime Minister, should meet. I think that I heard the Minister saying that he agreed with that. Does that mean that it is going to meet? Surely the answer to some of the suggestions is that the principal Cabinet officers responsible should conduct a regular review, that we should know that that happens, and that they should report to the Intelligence and Security Committee.

Denis MacShane: The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. The Prime Minister accepts that recommendation, and the CSI will meet in due course. I stress, however, that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, who is present, and my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, who is not here today, are the two senior Cabinet officers who should have charge of this. I am frankly against the notion of appointing a third Minister to be above or below them because it would be purely job creation for Ministers.

Simon Hughes: I hope that the Minister does not misunderstand me. Of course, the Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary perfectly properly take day-to-day responsibility for the two security services—one is accountable for domestic matters and one for foreign matters. My suggestion is not that new people should do things but that the Prime Minister and key Cabinet Ministers, including the Defence Secretary and the Deputy Prime Minister, should come together regularly to ensure that the operation is co-ordinated and brought together with the Prime Minister, as the principal Minister in Government, taking charge. Surely that is a good idea that should be implemented soon.

Denis MacShane: It is an extremely good idea and, on behalf of the Prime Minister, I assure the hon. Gentleman that we accept the points that he makes.
	Ministers on the CSI are consulted on the requirements placed on their agencies, and their role in the process is being reinforced under the revised system that is being introduced this year. Contrary to the concern expressed in the ISC report, all CSI members have received, and will continue to receive, all Joint Intelligence Committee papers.
	The third issue that I identify from the ISC report is the conclusions on ministerial involvement in counter-proliferation policy. I cannot accept the Committee's central conclusion that Ministers are not adequately informed on counter-proliferation issues or that ministerial responsibilities are unclear. The Government's counter-proliferation policy, which was formulated by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, was set out clearly in response to a recent question asked by the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs. The policy has been approved by Ministers, and they are also consulted on any major issues of implementation as they arise.
	The demarcation of departmental responsibilities is clear. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office leads bilateral and multilateral diplomatic activity. The Ministry of Defence leads on military operations and the Department of Trade and Industry covers national export controls. My right hon. Friends the Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary supervise the work of the agencies. That is not to say that counter-proliferation policy is compartmentalised in any way. On the contrary, it is an example of joined-up government. Action against a proliferator, whether that is an individual, a country or a Government, usually involves close co-operation among Departments and agencies that is co-ordinated by the Cabinet Office. As the ISC report notes, the Committee has been briefed on enhancements to that machinery that were introduced last year.
	That brings me to an important final point. The threats facing the United Kingdom are formidable. The terrorist attacks in New York, Bali and Riyadh were thoroughly planned and executed. The North Korean nuclear and long-range missile programmes have been in development for well over a decade. Terrorists and proliferators use increasingly sophisticated means to work across national boundaries.

Julian Lewis: I am grateful to the Minister for allowing me to intervene again, but I remind him that he said that he would address the point that I raised earlier: if the threats are so serious, why have the Government not appointed a specific Minister to be devoted entirely to co-ordinating the measures necessary to meet such dangerous threats? The Opposition have done that, in shadow terms, by appointing my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) to his post.

Denis MacShane: The hon. Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) has many friends in the House and I hope that he will be promoted to the shadow Cabinet one day, although I do not know who will be removed to make way for him. I repeat what I said when I talked about ministerial oversight: I am content with the oversight of my right hon. Friends the Home Secretary, the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister. They form a good trio and we do not require extra Ministers to duplicate their work.
	Tackling these threats is not only a matter of intelligence collation and assessment by national authorities, but a matter of co-ordination with other countries. It requires joint law enforcement operations and renewed international efforts to address the underlying grievances and insecurities that provide terrorists with new recruits and fuel the appetite of regimes for the world's deadliest weapons. It is an intimidating array of challenges, but the Government will pursue them with unrelenting vigour because the security of our citizens at home and overseas demands no less.
	An effective Government response to the threats that we face requires effective intelligence agencies. The ISC has shown, yet again, that through the way in which it conducts its work, it contributes both to the effectiveness and accountability of our intelligence effort. On behalf of not only the Government but the whole House and the country, I thank the Committee and all its members for their work.

Michael Ancram: I start by saying that we quite understand why the Foreign Secretary is unable to be with us today. Many of us have occasionally found ourselves in the same circumstances and, given those circumstances, I am rather relieved that he is not here. I hope that the Minister for Europe will stop off on his way to Gibraltar and give the Foreign Secretary our best wishes for a speedy recovery. When he arrives in Gibraltar, I hope that he will explain to the people of Gibraltar what he meant when he told a Spanish newspaper recently that Gibraltar was not British territory. I am sure that he will be met with rapturous applause if he tells them that again.
	With debate still raging about the Government's use—or abuse—of intelligence material, today's debate is not only important but, one that falls at an especially appropriate moment. The subject is serious, and balance and sensitivity are required. Although openness and democratic accountability are important, there is a need for discretion at the same time, if only to protect intelligence officers and their sources. Striking that balance is key, and the House's ability to do that has been greatly assisted by the detailed scrutiny undertaken on its behalf by the Intelligence and Security Committee. I pay tribute to the Committee, under the chairmanship of the right hon. Member for Dewsbury (Ann Taylor), for its important work and the informative report that it issued.
	Reading the report is sometimes something of a surreal experience due to the omissions that were deemed necessary. I am not sure how one should pronounce asterisks in the House, but paragraph 28 illustrates the surreal nature of the report better than others. It says:
	"*** continues to deliver considerable value to GCHQ and it may exceed its design life. As a consequence, GCHQ expects to extend the expected life of *** and make the corresponding accounting changes. *** will start later this year. The Committee wishes to record the significant contribution that *** makes to intelligence collection."
	And so would all of us, if we had the first idea what "***" was.

Andrew MacKinlay: May I interrupt and break up the cosy consensus between the two Front Benches because I think that the Committee is not a servant of Parliament? As the right hon. Gentleman is on the subject of asterisks, I draw hon. Members' attention to the glossary of terms on page 3 of the report. It says that CNI stands for "Critical National Infrastructure", and so on. The glossary is very helpful because it gives the meaning of "***"—or dot, dot, dot. One looks with great anticipation to find out what dot, dot, dot means, and the answer in the glossary is dot, dot, dot. The whole report is dotty and barmy. It should not be defended and people should not pretend that it represents a satisfactory oversight of our security and intelligence services. It is a sham.

Michael Ancram: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will agree with my serious point that when the Committee reports on its current inquiry, I hope that it will be neither asterisked nor dot, dot, dotted.

Julian Lewis: I, too, noticed the omission on page 3, and I might be able to enlighten the House to an extent. All the acronyms in the glossary are in alphabetical order, so whatever the missing organisation is, it comes alphabetically between FCO and GCHQ. The organisation almost certainly begins with the letter "F". I thought that it might be a shady Northern Irish organisation, but I have decided that "F" probably stands for "forty-five minutes".

Michael Ancram: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that helpful and deductive piece of work. I shall certainly ask for his assistance when I try to complete The Times crossword in future.
	To be fair, the Government's response concedes that one of the purposes of oversight is to identify potential problems—indeed it is. Let me start with a major current problem. In a nutshell, when is a report that is published and described in Parliament as "an intelligence report" not an intelligence report, and how is Parliament supposed to know that? One of the most important links between the intelligence services and Parliament must be trust.
	Hon. Members who are not within the security loops need to be able to place credence in that which they are told is intelligence. I refer the House to February's dodgy dossier, mentioned in paragraph 82 of the report. We were told that it was "further intelligence", and so, presumably, was the United States Secretary of State Colin Powell, who went on to tell the UN that its detail was "exquisite". We now know that that was not the case. The document was partly cut-and-pasted material from the internet and, far from being an intelligence service or even a JIC production, its authors were the ubiquitous Mr. Alastair Campbell and a small band of acolytes.
	The ISC report states that unlike the September dossier, this dossier had not been cleared by the JIC prior to its publication or checked by the relevant agencies. As if to confirm that, the Foreign Secretary somewhat quaintly described it to the Foreign Affairs Committee as "a horlicks". That, however, was not what the Prime Minister told the House. After the dossier's publication on 3 February, the Prime Minister said:
	"We issued further intelligence over the weekend about the infrastructure of concealment. It is obviously difficult when we publish intelligence reports, but I hope that people have some sense of the integrity of our security services."
	He went on to say:
	"It is the intelligence that they are receiving, and we"—
	the Government—
	"are passing on to the people."—[Official Report, 3 February 2003; Vol. 399, c. 25.]
	The Prime Minister's statement could hardly have been clearer, but as we now know from the evidence of Mr. Campbell and the Foreign Secretary, the dossier was not intelligence. The Prime Minister misled the House. Whether he did that deliberately, knowing that the document was a Downing street concoction, or unwittingly, because Mr. Campbell had not seen fit to tell him, does not actually matter. The House, on that occasion, had been if not exquisitely, certainly comprehensively duped.

David Blunkett: rose—

Ann Taylor: rose—

Michael Ancram: I will give way to the Home Secretary when I have made my point. I want to develop it because it is serious. I will also give way to the right hon. Member for Dewsbury whose report I mentioned.
	As I said, the Government should not underestimate the seriousness of the issue. There can be no graver offence against the House than to deceive it by manipulating or misrepresenting intelligence information. The House, which does not enjoy the benefit of intelligence briefings, must be able to rely on the word of the Prime Minister on intelligence. In my view, the Prime Minister has an overriding duty not to mislead the House on matters of intelligence. The Prime Minister's statement was therefore serious. He is, in a sense, the trustee of intelligence on behalf of the House.

Denis MacShane: Cheap.

Michael Ancram: The Minister says that, but his colleagues behind him are nodding because they know that I am making a serious point. It cannot be brushed aside. If we are to have confidence in what the Prime Minister or the Government tell us about intelligence information in the future, how and why the Prime Minister misled the House on this occasion—[Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. These are very serious matters and I ask the House to deal with them seriously. Let us have no more interventions from a sedentary position. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will give way to the Home Secretary in a moment.

Michael Ancram: If we are to have confidence in what the Prime Minister or the Government tell us about intelligence information in the future, how and why the Prime Minister misled the House on this occasion must be cleared up. The Home Secretary has tried to intervene. I hope that he can clear things up.

David Blunkett: In the spirit that you have asked us to take in our approach to the issue, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I put it to the right hon. Gentleman that it is an absolute disgrace to come here and accuse my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister of comprehensively duping and misleading the House on the matter. Such an allegation has not been made by other Conservative Front-Bench spokesmen. The leader of the Conservative party has accepted the evidence again and again, including that given to him under the Privy Council rules that apply so that he can receive comprehensive intelligence evidence. I ask the right hon. Gentleman to withdraw a scurrilous, unsubstantiated and disgraceful allegation against the Prime Minister.

Michael Ancram: rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Before the right hon. Gentleman responds, I ask him to weigh his words carefully. To accuse any Member of the House of deliberately misleading it is a very serious matter.

Michael Ancram: I accept that, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I carefully said that I was not going to say whether it was deliberate or not, because it does not matter. What is important is that the House is able to hear what the Prime Minister in particular says to it about intelligence and to have confidence in it. The Home Secretary has missed the point. It is not me who is saying that the Prime Minister was wrong: it is Alastair Campbell in the evidence that he gave to the Select Committee and, indeed, the Committee, which reported that the document had not been cleared by the JIC and had not been checked with the relevant agencies.

Ann Taylor: I do not want to get embroiled in the discussions between Front-Bench spokesmen, but I ask the right hon. Gentleman to be careful not to misquote the Committee. He said that there was no intelligence in the February document. The Committee says that the document contained some intelligence-derived material, but it was not clearly attributed or highlighted among other material and was not checked. I hope that he will not attribute conclusions to the Committee that it has not reached.

Michael Ancram: I hear what the right hon. Lady says. If she reads what I said, she will notice that I used my words carefully. I said that the dossier was not an intelligence document. That is carried by the report, which says that it was not cleared by the JIC prior to publication, nor was it checked with the agency providing the intelligence. I was careful in what I said because it is important. I am making an important point about the right of the House to rely on information given to it by senior Ministers as to what is intelligence and what is not.

Julian Lewis: I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way again and I shall endeavour not to try the patience of the House. In preparation for the debate, last night I looked at the uncorrected transcript of the evidence taken by the Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday 19 June from Mr. Ibrahim al-Marashi, the author of the dissertation—the article—in the "Middle East Review of International Affairs", which was used in the second dossier. Something struck me which I had not heard before. My right hon. Friend may be interested to know that in response to question 701 on page 43 of the transcript, Mr. al-Marashi said:
	"If I could estimate, I would say that 90 per cent. of this intelligence dossier was taken from the three articles: by myself . . . and the two articles in Jane's Intelligence Review, virtually unchanged."
	So only 10 per cent. at most was not from articles by academics like himself.

Michael Ancram: Again, I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who underlines effectively the point that I have been trying to make.

Michael Portillo: Does my right hon. Friend think that the Home Secretary is in danger of being off message? I read carefully what the Prime Minister said to the House on 3 February 2003 at column 25. He seems to enter no caveat about the document being a mixed document. He talks firmly about it being intelligence. The most likely conclusion to draw from that is that the Prime Minister at that time had no idea that it was a mixed document. He had been misled by those who passed it to him. Surely the Home Secretary would be on much firmer ground in saying that it has since been recognised that the document was an appalling mess and that the Prime Minister was put in the position of misleading the House inadvertently on 3 February because he had not been told that.

Michael Ancram: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. That was one of the options that I hinted at—

Denis MacShane: Ah!

Michael Ancram: If the Minister reads what I said, he will see that I said it was either one thing or the other. It is up to the Prime Minister to explain which.
	Let me make what I hope is a constructive suggestion. To prevent manipulation of intelligence material in the future, is there not a way of registering at publication whether a report is based on genuine intelligence material and has been cleared by the JIC? Perhaps the Committee will consider that. It would at least allow us to avoid the difficulty arising again.

Ann Taylor: I draw the right hon. Gentleman's attention to the end of paragraph 82, in which the Committee says:
	"We have been assured that systems have now been put in place to ensure that this cannot happen again, in that JIC Chairman endorses any material on behalf of the intelligence community prior to publication."
	We have taken that matter up with those involved.

Michael Ancram: I welcome that. I just hope that it will be done in such a way that those of us in the House who are not privy to intelligence material will know that it is being done, and can understand the difference between an intelligence report and what we got on 3 February, which we now know was a concoction from various different sources.
	Today's world is much changed from the world of the cold war, with the certainties that the superpower balance and the doctrine of mutually assured destruction imposed on us. As 9/11 demonstrated so tragically, today's threats are unpredictable. Terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, rogue or failed states as well as economic collapse, poverty and disease all threaten regional stability and our own security. The strongest weapon against them is good intelligence. I shall not speak about domestic security and the threat from terrorism in domestic terms as I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin), the shadow Home Secretary, will wish to do so when he winds up on our behalf. However, intelligence is at the centre of this fight. Indeed, increasing emphasis is placed on the value of electronic intelligence. However, in some parts of the world, human intelligence is equally, if not more, important. We must ensure that our human network is effective and that there are sufficient resources on the ground in the most sensitive areas. I hope that we can be reassured of that in the light of the report.
	I pay tribute to the often dangerous, unsung and sometimes secret work that the members of the intelligence and security services carry out on our behalf and for our safety. I include special branch officers in that tribute because quite often the role that they play is missed. I am glad that the Minister also paid tribute to the intelligence services. That is in strong contrast to the comments of some of his ministerial colleagues. Accusing the intelligence services of containing "rogue elements", as the Secretary of State for Health did recently in a moment of hysteria, is both unjust and damaging. I can find no justification for those words anywhere within the report or elsewhere. I hope that those on the Government Front Bench will today disown those silly words.
	I welcome the appointment of Sir David Omand as security and intelligence co-ordinator, and as accounting officer for the single intelligence account.
	I shall respond briefly to some of the specific points that are made in the report, and first, gaps in intelligence. Last year's annual report stated that the reductions in collection areas were causing
	"intelligence gaps to develop which may mean over time unacceptable risks will arise in terms of safeguarding national security and in the prevention and detecting of serious organised crime."
	It is therefore worrying that this year paragraph 67 reads:
	"GCHQ has reduced analysis effort in a number of possible trouble spots."
	The Committee believes that this confirms
	"that the problem of collection gaps has worsened and therefore risks are being taken with national security."
	That is a serious charge. The Committee concludes that
	"with the focus on current crises, the Agencies' long-term capacity to provide warnings is being eroded. This situation needs to be addressed and managed by Ministers and the JIC."
	These intelligence gaps should concern the House greatly, and must be rectified.
	Astonishingly, the CSI still has not met. The Minister told us that it will meet in due course. I do not know what he means by that. It is a term that normally stretches way into the future, and is a way of kicking balls into the long grass. I wonder how many other committees, after six and a half years of this Government, have not met. That is extraordinary, and we have had no real explanation for that. The Prime Minister and relevant Ministers have met only on short-term issues.
	At paragraph 56, the Committee reports that
	"these crisis-driven and ad-hoc groupings do not provide Ministers with an active forum in which they can make collective decisions about longer-term intelligence requirements and priorities for secret intelligence across the full range of topics."
	The paragraph concludes that
	"CSI Ministers are not sufficiently engaged in the setting of requirements and priorities for secret intelligence, nor do they all see the full capability of intelligence collection."
	These are serious charges that go to the heart of a joined-up approach to the effective and strategic use of intelligence, and the Committee's warnings should not be ignored.
	Do the Government agree with the Committee's conclusions in relation to weapons of mass destruction? Paragraph 78 states that:
	"However, world-wide, sanctions, even when effective, only slow proliferation."
	What implications does that comment have for the current strategy on North Korea and Iran? Is it really a good idea for it to be left to be carried out mostly by officials, as the report suggests?
	On Iraq, I welcome recognition of the fact that intelligence—I quote from paragraph 80—
	"indicated that the Iraqis were continuing to produce WMD and their delivery means."
	There is much still to be explored and answered in this area, but such scrutiny will better follow the Committee's current investigation and subsequent report.
	I am pleased that the Government listened to the Committee's earlier report regarding problems and shortcomings in the previous counter-terrorism and analysis system as exposed by the Bali bombing. I, too, hope that the establishment of the joint terrorism and analysis centre will address the points that have been raised. We welcome any steps that will lead to a more joined-up approach that will increase efficiency and, of course, public safety. I welcome the Foreign Secretary's constructive response to suggestions that I made about travel advice. I welcome also the incorporation of our ideas for links between British and other Government travel advice. As the Committee notes, the advice is now clearer and consistent.
	The Committee also examined GCHQ and commented on the changes and modernisation programme that is underway there. The report raises concerns in paragraph 29
	"about the size of the planned write-off . . . that GCHQ is having to make in the next year for a developmental SIGINT system that has only partly delivered the intended capability."
	What assurances has the Foreign Secretary or the Minister received from GCHQ on this matter, and what steps are being taken to remedy this problem?
	I shall refer briefly to Guantanamo bay. I understand that it has been a matter of interest to the intelligence services since British prisoners were first taken there in January 2002. I understand why prisoners from the war in Afghanistan were taken to Guantanamo bay and the practical reasons for their rights being suspended in the public interest in order to obtain potentially vital information in the war on terrorism. However, as the months have passed with no charges being laid and apparently no due process, the British public have become increasingly uneasy about the situation. I understand why, and I believe that we must respond to this uneasiness.
	A tenet of our law is that British citizens should not be held for an unduly long period without charge. In normal circumstances there are safeguards that protect the citizen, not least the principle of habeas corpus and the judicial scrutiny of Executive decisions to extend periods of detention. I yield to no one in my determination to see terrorism eradicated. Force is necessary and special rules must sometimes be accepted, but law must also have its place. The nine British citizens held in Guantanamo bay have been there for 17 months without charge or apparent due process. I believe that the time has come for the Government to act. They must now let the House know how they intend to proceed.
	We are told that progress has been made. Will the Home Secretary, when he responds to the debate, or the Minister—I will give way if he wants to intervene now—tell the House what has been agreed with our American colleagues? We have heard tell of tribunals. Will the Home Secretary or the Minister tell us how these tribunals will work? Has a date been set for the start of these tribunals? Has any agreement been reached on the handling of charges? What legal representation will the British detainees have? These are important questions. It seems that the Minister does not want to respond. I hope that the Home Secretary can take advice and respond to my questions when he winds up.
	I do not for a moment underestimate the complexities of the Guantanamo bay situation. However, we cannot pretend that it does not exist, or that if it does, it is not our business. The Government must face their responsibilities.

Simon Hughes: The right hon. Gentleman raises a matter that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell) and others in my party have raised. Does he share our view that British citizens at Guantanamo bay should be allowed to return to the United Kingdom or should be transferred to the British authorities so that if there are charges, they can be dealt with in this country, or if there are no charges, they will be released in the normal way?

Michael Ancram: I have set out a series of questions, which I hope will inform the House and upon which we can make judgments on what is the best way to proceed.
	The debate provides an important opportunity for the House to consider the intelligence and security services and their work in broad terms. It also allows us to pick up on some specific areas of concern. We can be satisfied with the Committee's report—at least those parts that were not asterisked. Even the Government's response, replete with its usual dose of blame avoidance, meets at least some of the points raised. However, the Government's response fails to face the strongest public concern about the allegations that the Government cynically misuse intelligence material as a tool of their propaganda and seek to make the intelligence services unwilling accomplices. Their characteristically arrogant dismissal of these allegations has neither persuaded us nor the British people.
	The greatest service that the ISC can perform is to bring it home to the Government that first and foremost the British intelligence services work on behalf of the British people, and they cannot and must never be a malleable tool of government. We respect our intelligence services, and I hope that the Government will do the same.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Before I call the next speaker, I remind the House that Mr. Speaker has placed a 15-minute limit on all Back-Bench speeches, and that applies from now on.

Ann Taylor: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I shall try to keep within that limit.
	I very much regret the fact that the Foreign Secretary cannot be with us, as I know that he takes a direct interest in these matters. There would have to be a very good reason and a very serious illness for him to be away. However, I welcome the Minister's comments, although I regret that he cannot stay to the end of the debate because he has to go to Gibraltar. I suspect he regrets that he cannot stay, but I hope he will continue to take an interest in these matters.
	The debate on the Intelligence and Security Committee annual report provides an opportunity to highlight our main concerns. The Committee has oversight of all the intelligence and security agencies, and it is important that we concentrate on issues of concern. However, while the report concentrates on problems, the Committee makes it clear that it wants to put the work of the agencies in context. I would draw the attention of my colleagues to paragraph 6, which states that
	"it is important to highlight the numerous successes that the Agencies have had in the last year, many of which cannot be reported to avoid prejudicing current and future operations."
	We go on to stress that the Committee holds the agencies in high regard, and it is important that that should be on the record, as should the Committee's belief that it is very well served by the agencies' briefings. We do not regard those briefings as minimalist in any way, and we have had a good opportunity to question senior people on many occasions. We are grateful for that level of co-operation, which gives us a unique reference point for many of the issues that have come up in the past year.
	There is much interest in the issue of Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, on which the right hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) commented. Many other colleagues may wish to speak about Iraq, but it is important to stress that at this stage the Committee will not add to what it says in the annual report. However, I want to put our remarks in paragraphs 80 to 83 in context. We received ongoing briefings throughout the build-up to the conflict and, indeed, throughout the conflict itself, by the JIC Chairman and others in the agencies about what was happening. Indeed, we first took evidence on the problems associated with the preparation of the document to which the right hon. Member for Devizes referred in February. That is why we made the comments that I referred to in my intervention on him in paragraphs 80 to 83 on Iraq. We say clearly in paragraph 81 that the agencies were fully consulted in the preparation of the dossier produced in September 2002. However, we say in paragraph 82 that that procedure was not followed for a second document produced in February. As I pointed out to the right hon. Gentleman, we acknowledge that there is intelligence-derived material in that document, but it should have been clear what was intelligence derived and what was not. We have been assured that the JIC Chairman will in future endorse any material, and we shall want to follow up that important matter, as will the right hon. Gentleman and the House.

Lynne Jones: Paragraph 80 of the report refers to intelligence passed on to UN inspectors. Is my right hon. Friend aware whether all relevant intelligence in the hands of the British authorities was passed to both the weapons inspectors and the International Atomic Energy Agency?

Ann Taylor: That is not covered by our report. We have said that we will not give a running commentary on our current inquiries. Such issues are the subject of the report that we are getting on with as quickly as we can, so at this stage I do not want to make any comments that would pre-empt any final decisions or recommendations that we might make.
	When we took evidence in February, we decided, as we record in paragraph 83, that we wanted to examine in more detail the available intelligence and its use, and that is what the Committee is doing at present. However tempting it is to give a running commentary, I am afraid that Committee members will not do so. However, we have received a number of letters about our inquiries, including from colleagues, suggesting lines of investigation. I hope that it goes without saying, but I shall put it on record none the less, that if anyone has evidence either of pressure on or within the agencies or of inappropriate behaviour, we want to see that evidence, whether from Members of Parliament, the media or people working in this field.

Andrew MacKinlay: I have been listening carefully to my right hon. Friend's invitation to colleagues to make representations to the Committee, which I welcome. However, I am bewildered by paragraph 90, in which she says that her Committee has not looked into the question of the abuse of the Wilson doctrine. She merely says that the Prime Minister has not told the Committee of any change in the application of the Wilson doctrine, so it just lies there. Bearing in mind press reports and concern and reaction in the House about the bugging of MPs' telephones, why has her Committee not looked into that with vigour?

Ann Taylor: I know that my hon. Friend is usually assiduous, but for once he has not done his homework. I know that he was here last year when we put in context our discussions on that matter—we said that we would report to the House if necessary. We look at the issue and report on it on an ongoing basis. I know that my hon. Friend is also interested in our current inquiry, so I shall make some final remarks about that. We want to complete it as soon as possible but, inevitably, that will take some time, as we want to be thorough and are treating the issue extremely seriously. We are having meetings and taking evidence in the summer recess. I hope that the work that the Committee has done in the past, for example on Bali, will give people confidence in our current work.
	I shall move on to what I regard as one of the most fundamental points in our report—the way in which intelligence machinery works, particularly the relationship between intelligence assessment and policy formation, and the extent to which Ministers are engaged with that machinery. The Committee, as the right hon. Member for Devizes said, has highlighted concerns before, particularly about the fact that the ministerial committee on the intelligence services—the CSI—has not met. We repeat that criticism this year, and we are not, as the Government response seems to imply, suggesting that there is not a good relationship between the Foreign Secretary, the Secret Intelligence Service and GCHQ, or between the Home Secretary and the security services. We are not saying that at all—we are saying that there should be a collective overview across Government of the abilities of all the agencies and the challenges facing them. It is important that that overview is in place and that Ministers collectively can talk about the issues and problems facing us. If we are to maximise the contributions that the agencies can make, we need not only co-operative working between the agencies—a great deal of that already takes place—but a long-term strategy that involves Ministers collectively establishing priorities and requirements in order to determine the resources that are needed.
	It has been mentioned, and the Minister indicated, that there might be a meeting of the CSI—I think the words were "in due course". It is not telling any secrets to say that when we met the Prime Minister recently, he said that there would be a meeting of the CSI and that there was an acceptance that there should be a collective overview, which we think is a significant step forward. We believe that, particularly given current and potential threats, Ministers are not sufficiently engaged in setting requirements and priorities, and we think they need to be aware of the totality of the intelligence capability that exists and how it can be used to best effect.

Oliver Letwin: Before the right hon. Lady moves off the structural questions, could she guide us on her attitude and that of the Committee to a hypothetical question that is nevertheless extremely serious? If it should turn out—as we profoundly hope, in the light of what we all believed, that it will not—that there are not the weapons of mass destruction that were believed to exist, and given that that would clearly indicate a very serious failing at some point in the intelligence system, does she envisage her Committee conducting a full review of the causes of Ministers and the Opposition not understanding the situation as it actually was? Does she believe that her Committee is constituted in such a way as to be capable of carrying that out to her full satisfaction?

Ann Taylor: I do not want be drawn into answers to hypothetical questions, but in regard to the last point made by the right hon. Gentleman, yes, I do believe that the Committee is constituted in such a way that we can carry out inquiry that we feel is appropriate. We have in other instances followed leads—for example, on Bali—and asked for further information, and been given access to it, which has had an impact on the judgments that the Committee made. So we are confident that we have the ability and the co-operation to do so. Should it turn out that we are not able to fulfil what we regard as being necessary, we will say so. We would also say so if we were not getting the full co-operation that we expected.
	I turn to another aspect of the problem. One of the things that we report is that not all CSI members see all JIC papers. We think that that is important. Ministers on the relevant Committee are sent all papers, but often their officials sift the papers or advise Ministers which they should read. That is not good enough. I should like to say more about this, but I do not have time. We think it important that all Ministers on the Committee should see all the JIC papers in order to build up an overview, so that problems do not arise.
	That brings me to the problem of collection gaps, which the right hon. Member for Devizes mentioned. As he said, we mentioned last year that intelligence gaps were beginning to develop. The Government's response last year acknowledged the pressures, and there have been more resources. However, making more resources available does not mean that people with sufficient expertise and experience are instantly available to fill the gaps. We think the situation is probably worse than it was last year, given all the pressures following 11 September, Bali and Iraq.
	There is a real difficulty. Problems may be arising of which Ministers are not aware, even though they see the pressures. We need to protect the agencies' long-term capacity to provide warnings to Ministers. JIC needs to focus even more on this. In the next spending review, there must be sufficient long-term resourcing to deal with the problem and avoid difficulties in future. There is a feeling at present that firefighting is going on, dealing with current problems, whereas the agencies are at their most useful when they can warn off and disrupt challenges to our security.
	Colleagues on the Committee will want to use their time to raise other issues. I shall make quick points. First, we welcome what the Government did on Bali following our report. There were useful steps forward. Secondly, we are still extremely concerned about the accounts at GCHQ. We mentioned the difficulties in resource accounting there, and we are not yet convinced that they have been fully sorted out, even though progress has been made.
	Finally, I wish to say a word of gratitude to the Committee. The Committee's work load is significant and will be for some time to come. The Committee meets several times a week, and will meet during the recess. I know that my colleagues on the Committee have had to juggle diaries and miss other parliamentary occasions in order to keep up with their work. It is usual for members of the Committee to attend every meeting. It is rare that we have a Committee meeting without everyone there and everyone staying until the end—a somewhat unusual occurrence. I am grateful for members' commitment and for the spirit in which the Committee operates. I hope very much that our work is of value to the House.

Menzies Campbell: It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Dewsbury (Ann Taylor). I begin by paying tribute to her and to the members of her Committee, who are renowned in the House for their independence of mind. The report is an eloquent testimony to the work that they have carried out on our behalf over the past 12 months.
	Like others, I wish the Foreign Secretary a speedy return to full health. I am sorry that he is not present, as I wished to congratulate him on the fact that, as I understand it, he is the first official of his standing on a visit to Afghanistan to have gone beyond Kabul and to have gone out to Kandahar to see for himself some of the circumstances that are giving rise to such anxiety about the progress of reconstruction being made in that country.
	We had an able substitute in the Minister for Europe. I urge him not to be too concerned when he gets to Gibraltar if he finds that drawn up alongside the aircraft is a tumbrel. His previously reported remarks will at least ensure that his arrival in Gibraltar does not go unnoticed.
	The right hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) was right to raise in the framework of the debate the fate of those who are detained not only in Guantanamo bay, but perhaps some two or three in Afghanistan as well. If I may say so, he asked some finely judged questions on an issue that I have tried to raise with the Foreign Secretary for some months.
	I shall make two comments. First, those men, who are British citizens, are in a legal no-man's-land in which they are unable to employ or make application to the jurisdiction of the courts in this country or in the United States. They are effectively stateless, so far as their legal rights are concerned. I invite right hon. and hon. Members to consider this. Suppose that the position were reversed, and it was the Government of the United Kingdom who were keeping nine citizens of the United States in similar conditions in this country over a similar period. Do we not think that the pressure for some progress from across the Atlantic would be anything other than irresistible?
	I turn to the terms of the report. I hope that the right hon. Lady will not think me churlish if I say that in some respects the report is notable for its omissions as much as for its contents. Those omissions were highlighted by the right hon. Member for Devizes a moment or two ago with an example. Paragraph 3 of the introduction to the report states:
	"To date, no material has been excluded without the Committee's consent."
	I therefore assume that any exclusions marked by asterisks arise only because there is a belief that there would be serious damage to national interests if material which would otherwise have appeared there were to be published. Perhaps we can test that proposition by looking at page 8, where there is a table setting out, under the heading "Expenditure and Resources", the resources and capital of GCHQ, SIS and the Security Service. Can it really be the case that the national interest would be irretrievably damaged if we were to know the resource and capital allocations for GCHQ? I confess that I simply do not believe that to be so.

Michael Mates: I think that it is probably pertinent to note, speaking as one of the older members of the Committee, that it is only in relatively recent years that that table has been included at all. That is why what has been said about the Committee's assent to what is removed means that we are making some progress. I assure the right hon. and learned Gentleman that if certain of the figures were made public, they would be of use to anybody who wished us ill.

Menzies Campbell: The argument is assuming some existential elements. Apparently, we have made progress because whereas previously there was no table, we now have a table that contains no figures. [Interruption.] It contains some figures, but it certainly does not contain them in respect of any allocation that would allow anyone to reach any judgment about the importance that the financial allocations in such matters represent in relation to GCHQ or the SIS. I hope that the test of what goes into the report and what stays out is the issue of irretrievable damage to the national interest.
	One could also look at page 11 and paragraphs 27 to 29, although the right hon. Member for Devizes referred to paragraph 28, so perhaps I need not deal further with that part of the report. We can also look at page 10 and paragraphs 23 to 26. Exactly what information is a reasonably well informed Member of the House expected to derive from paragraph 25? It seems to me that there is very little that we can derive and which assists us in fulfilling our general responsibility of scrutiny, which is not taken away from us by the existence of the Committee.
	At paragraph 30, why is it that we should not know precisely what the bonus payment will be for the building consortium if it completes the building ahead of time? I can see nothing that affects the national interest in relation to that issue, which I am bound to say might be of interest to those who are responsible for the Scottish Parliament. Why, too, should the House, which votes on and is responsible for expenditure, not know more about the qualification that the Comptroller and Auditor General has made of the resource accounts as set out on pages 12 and 13 and in paragraphs 34 to 37?
	In paragraph 42 on page 14, the second-to-last sentence states:
	"The Security Service noted that it was *** than in the past and consequently they did not have the ***."
	What was it that the Security Service noted that was different from the past and which it does not have now?
	I suppose that such things are a source of some amusement, and there may well be issues in which the matter of national security would be prejudiced if more detail were provided, but I certainly hope that, in future, the Committee may take a robust attitude towards such material, so that the House may be as fully informed as possible.

Alan Howarth: May I assure the right hon. and learned Gentleman that we do, indeed, take a very robust view? For example, we take the matter of the qualification of the GCHQ accounts very seriously indeed. We think that the Government should take it seriously, and for my part, I am not entirely satisfied that quite the appropriate note of contrition is struck in paragraph 8 of the Government's response. It is a serious matter if accounts should be qualified. It is very serious in the private sector, and it should be so in the public sector, and that is the view of the Committee.

Menzies Campbell: I know the right hon. Gentleman well and I know that he would not give an undertaking of that kind unless he meant it. However, when the report is looked at from outside by those of us who do not have access to the same information as the Committee, it does not provide us with the detailed information for which we would hope.

Kevin Barron: Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman accept that, if we were to publish all the figures in place of the asterisks, both year on year and in terms of the resources and capital featured in the table, and all the other paragraphs to which he referred, not only Members of Parliament, but people in general, would be able to construct or deconstruct ideas about where things are moving in terms of resources and money going into the different agencies? While it may not be clear to us here, the fact is that many people around the world might like to know that information, to our disadvantage.

Menzies Campbell: My only answer is that the United States has just as much to keep secret as we do—some might argue that it has rather more—and it seems to me that it has a greater degree of transparency. Of course, we will find out about that higher transparency in the two investigations that are being conducted in the Senate and the House of Representatives. I think that I have made my point and that members of the Committee have had an adequate opportunity to respond.
	Let me draw to the attention of the House a matter to which the right hon. Member for Devizes also referred. On page 21, in paragraph 67, the Committee was moved to say:
	"GCHQ has reduced analysis effort in a number of possible trouble spots. These developments confirm our belief that the problem of collection gaps has worsened and therefore risks are being taken with national security."
	Knowing the members of the Committee as I do, and in the light of the observations that I have already made, I imagine that that charge was not lightly made and that it represents and reflects a very serious concern on the part of the Committee. I very much hope that that concern will have been understood and acted on by the Government.
	It is inevitable that the most topical feature of the Committee's report is its continuing examination of the role of intelligence in relation to Iraq, which is dealt with on pages 24 and 25 and in paragraphs 80 to 83 in particular. There have already been some exchanges about those paragraphs, and I do not think that I need seek to repeat them. It would be quite wrong of us to anticipate the Committee's conclusions, but it is notable that it was moved in paragraph 82 to make what I first thought of as implied criticism, but is perhaps more correctly described as express criticism, of the dossier of February 2003. Some might say that that criticism was muted; the dossier has certainly not been described, in colourful language, as a Horlicks. None the less, I have no doubt that the Committee will wish to return to that issue in the light of the evidence given to the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs and in its own evidence taking.
	I cannot pass by the opportunity to say that the mistake of February 2003 was no minor mistake of process, but a substantial error. I believe that the dossier must have been influential. Indeed, it was no doubt issued because it was thought that it would be influential. The report highlights two errors. First, it points to the use of unattributed material from the work of a PhD student, which was apparently 12 years old. Secondly, it refers to a failure to check with the relevant agency or the Joint Intelligence Committee. It was that which gave rise, in that rather inelegant phrase of Mr. Chris Patten, to something of a double whammy. It was more than simply an error of process.
	I hope that the right hon. Lady's Committee will examine precisely and in detail how that occurred.
	I hope also that the Committee will seek to determine the provenance of the 45-minute claim. I want to pose some questions that are not hypothetical, but relevant to the Committee's continuing investigation. Where did that 45-minute claim come from in the first instance? What qualifications, if any were attached to it? Through whose hands had the information passed, and who first took the decision to insert it into documents passed to No. 10? Who in No. 10 took the decision to give it the prominent position that it occupied in the dossier, particularly to put it in the foreword?
	We should not allow the somewhat artificial exchanges between Mr. Alastair Campbell and the BBC to obscure an issue that goes right to the heart of the Government's position, and which I hope the Committee will also examine in detail. It is this: was the intelligence sufficient in volume and quality to sustain the decision to go to war? In other words, as it has been put recently, did policy dictate intelligence or did intelligence dictate policy? How reliable was the 45-minute evidence, which we now understand—on the basis of what the Minister with responsibility for the armed forces said—to have come from one unsupported source? Would that normally be acceptable on an issue of such significance?
	I have two further questions for the Committee. What significance will it attach to these two facts: first, that no weapons were launched at 45 minutes' notice; and secondly, that some weeks after the cessation of hostilities no weapons have been found that are capable of being launched at 45 minutes' notice? I hope—indeed, I am confident—that the Committee will not be distracted by the froth of charge and counter-charge that has to some extent obscured those issues, which I regard as being of fundamental importance.

Bernard Jenkin: I fully concur with the questions that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is asking, which are very important, especially those concerning the role of Mr. Alastair Campbell and whether he availed himself of the special powers to instruct officials that were granted to him on his appointment, and which no previous press officer in No. 10 has ever had. Does he think that it might fall within the Committee's remit to judge whether the information passed to the Attorney-General might have affected the opinion that he eventually gave to this House, which was so instrumental in swaying the House's opinion?

Menzies Campbell: That issue was canvassed on a previous occasion when we debated these matters, and I offered some professional experience to say that when one is shown the opinion of counsel, one should always insist upon seeing the statement of facts that was presented to counsel before he issues that opinion. In relation to the Attorney-General's opinion, which we all know to have been material and influential, it would be a matter of some interest to know precisely what set of facts was presented to him before he reached the conclusions that he felt constrained to utter publicly.
	Of course, Mr. Campbell, to whom the hon. Gentleman referred, is no shrinking violet, and he gave no impression at all of being intimidated by the Foreign Affairs Committee. I hope that reports suggesting that the Committee may split along party lines will prove to be unfounded, because that would be deeply damaging to the reputations of the process of parliamentary scrutiny, the Select Committee system, and in turn, I suppose, the House of Commons.
	Let me return, if I may, to the main issue. The House and the country are entitled to know whether the Committee that is chaired by the right hon. Member for Dewsbury, which is charged with the responsibility of scrutinising intelligence-gathering agencies, is satisfied that the material placed before the Government by those agencies and, in turn, before the House by the Government, was sufficient to justify military action. That question goes right to the very heart of the Government's position, since there is no doubt that they based their justification on the presence of weapons of mass destruction and the imminence of their use. It is true that Foreign Office Ministers now say, no doubt correctly, "We never used the words 'imminent' or 'immediate.'" However, one has only to cast one's mind back to remember the atmosphere of the time, particularly after the enormously powerful speech that the Prime Minister made, with passionate certainty, in the debate that led to the vote of the House endorsing military action.

Denis MacShane: I wonder whether the right hon. and learned Gentleman is aware of this statement from the September dossier:
	"the threat from Iraq does not depend solely on the capabilities we have described. It arises also because of the violent and aggressive nature of Saddam Hussein's regime. His record of internal repression and external aggression gives rise to unique concern about the threat he poses."
	We must take that, combined with his failure to comply with resolution 1441, into consideration. I wonder if the right hon. and learned Gentleman wishes simply to focus on the political points that were made, quite improperly, by the right hon. Member for Devizes.

Menzies Campbell: I propose to focus on my own points. If anything, the Minister's quotation supports the point about imminence and immediacy.
	I ask hon. Members to consider a hypothesis. Let us suppose that the Government had said, "Saddam Hussein has failed to implement some 17 Security Council resolutions on weapons of mass destruction. We believe that he still has such weapons and he may be capable of using them, but we do not believe that their use is imminent or immediate. Notwithstanding that, we want to take military action before Dr. Blix has finished his inspections." Let us suppose that those criteria were put before the country and the House. Would anyone judge other than that they were less than persuasive?
	I began by acknowledging Committee members' contribution. They are good men and women and true. I have no doubt that, in normal circumstance, they are able to effect the necessary and responsible scrutiny of the security services.
	Going to war is not normal. Doing so in circumstances in which there is such public controversy over intelligence cannot be regarded as normal. Indeed, the extent of public anxiety, which brought more than 1 million people on to the streets of London, over proposed military action, was hardly normal.
	In such circumstances, we require an inquiry that is answerable not only to the Prime Minister or the House, but to the public. Notwithstanding the efforts of the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Intelligence and Security Committee, the proper form of inquiry would be independent of the House or the Prime Minister, and led by a member of the judiciary; otherwise, I do not believe that the questions of trust can be properly answered.

Gavin Strang: I am pleased to follow the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell). Hon. Members of all parties value the interest that he takes in the matters that we are considering and his contributions to our debates.
	I join colleagues in paying tribute to the intelligence and security agencies and to the many dedicated and skilled public servants who work for them. The agencies are important to our country, and we all know that those in the front line put their lives at risk every day.
	Let me consider the Intelligence and Security Committee annual report. My right hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Ann Taylor), who chairs the Committee, has already referred to one of the most forceful points that the report makes. It relates to the ministerial committee on the intelligence services, which has not met. My right hon. Friend sets out the position starkly in the letter that prefaces the report. The Committee made the point in four consecutive annual reports that CSI has not met. In November 2000, the Committee expressed surprise that CSI had not met since 1995. Imagine how much more surprised our predecessors would have been if they knew that, three years later, it still would not have met.
	The point is not purely mechanistic. We do not say that CSI has to meet simply because it exists. We believe that working only on a crisis-led basis means that Ministers on the CSI are not sufficiently engaged in setting requirements and priorities for secret intelligence. Rather than simply endorsing officials' recommendations individually, those Ministers should meet and discuss the longer-term requirements and priorities before collectively agreeing to them. They should also examine the work of the services across the board. The democratic process requires that. Ministers' contributions and decisions would be enhanced if they regularly participated in a continuing process through CSI.
	The Government's response is most interesting. Paragraph 10 states:
	"Every year the Intelligence Requirements and Priorities Paper is formally submitted to CSI."
	That means that it is formally submitted to a CSI that does not meet. The paragraph also states:
	"The Government agrees that CSI has an important function especially in relation to the resourcing and future prioritisation of the Agencies' work, and should meet when appropriate to consider this work."
	It continues by saying that
	"under the new arrangements,"
	Ministers
	"will be involved at the beginning of the annual process as well as in authorising the final requirements."
	In response to the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes), the Minister specifically said that the Prime Minister had accepted that recommendation. That is progress. However, I emphasise that, in my view, the recommendation means that CSI should meet regularly. I do not specify every week or every month, but regularly.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury referred to Bali, but did not have time to say much about it. Perhaps it would be useful if I said a little more. In October, the Committee was asked to report on the Bali bombing and a debate was held in the House in March—unfortunately, for family reasons, I was unable to be present. As hon. Members will recall, the ISC produced a report that criticised the security services' assessment of the risk in Indonesia and the Foreign Office's consequent advice to British visitors. We also proposed a change in the threat levels used by the service. While the Security Service did not agree with the Committee's conclusion on its threat assessment, we were told that our recommendations informed its review of the threat assessment system, and that the definitions of threat levels were now more informative to customer departments.
	The Foreign Affairs Committee also issued recommendations on travel advice, and the Government have reviewed the policy and the mechanisms. Travel advice should now give a clearer indication of the situation in a country, and the likelihood of a terrorist attack there. Advice given to travellers should not differ from that given to British residents in the country. Our annual report welcomes those improvements, to which the Minister referred.
	I think the Bali report illustrates that when the Intelligence and Security Committee has criticisms to make it is free to make them, and does so. That point is worth making in the context of the work we have been doing, and will be doing, on Iraq.
	We completed our annual report in the first half of May. By then, as the report says, we had agreed that we would examine in more detail the intelligence and assessments available and their use, and would publish a further report dealing with Iraq. Our commitment to such a report was, of course, given more prominence by the subsequent argument about the Government's use of intelligence.
	On 4 June, the Prime Minister told the House that the ISC would conduct an investigation, and later that day its investigation was approved by a vote in the House. The Foreign Affairs Committee is currently conducting an investigation of the decision to go to war in Iraq, and I look forward to reading its report. I am sure that our Committee will also produce an assessment worth reading, given its access to information that is not available to other Committees. On 4 June, the Prime Minister told the House that he would give the ISC all the assessments of the Joint Intelligence Committee. That information, among other sources, will inform the conclusions of our report.
	In conducting its investigation, our Committee will operate just as we did during the Bali investigation: we will take oral evidence and examine documents. We will, I am sure, investigate how human and signal intelligence resources were deployed to obtain information in recent months and years. As was pointed out by the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife, quality is important, but so is volume. We will consider the intelligence provided, and its reliability; we will also analyse the degree of co-operation with the United States and others as the UK Government reached their conclusions on the situation in Iraq. Our report will be subject to debate in both Houses.
	The relationship between the Government and our Committee has been misrepresented in some quarters. Some have argued that Ministers can amend ISC reports before their publication. For obvious reasons, highly sensitive security or financial information is redacted, just as information is redacted—for reasons of national security or commercial confidentiality—from Select Committee reports. However, it is not true to say that Ministers amend our reports at will. As we say in our introduction,
	"To date, no material has been excluded without the Committee's consent".
	The Foreign Secretary has said that if he, the Prime Minister or the Home Secretary tried to amend a judgment by the Committee, that would, in his opinion, be a resigning matter. He gave a categorical undertaking that—security or financial redactions aside—there would be no attempt to amend our report.
	As we consider these issues, I find myself drawn into wider questions about the legitimate use of intelligence. Governments use intelligence all the time. Obviously, intelligence data are crucial in informing many ministerial decisions, but Governments can also refer to intelligence in explaining why those decisions were made.
	There must be restrictions on how intelligence is used publicly. It is clear that publication must not jeopardise national security or the work of the agencies, and must not put those who work for them at risk. In terms of procedure and presentation, a good example of what not to do is provided by the so-called dodgy dossier: intelligence was mixed up with all sorts of other material, material was not attributed, and the document was not properly cleared.
	Dos and don'ts must be laid down on the publication of intelligence. Key questions arise in that context. First, it must be recognised that in drafting documents for publication, any Government will tend to favour intelligence that supports their overall policy. The question is, should we accept that? Should we endeavour to remedy it or should we discourage Governments from publishing intelligence material at all? One could argue that, in the interests of democracy, we should aim for the maximum openness.
	The use of intelligence in the public domain is a difficult and sensitive subject, and should be approached with caution. The Committee may want to consider it further in the coming year and perhaps comment on it in our next annual report.
	When the Intelligence and Security Committee was set up in 1994, I was one of those who was rather sceptical about its value, because it depended entirely on information provided by Ministers and the heads of agencies. Having served on the Committee for two years, I believe that it plays a useful role. The fact that it operates, as it must, within the ring of secrecy, enables it to give the House greater confidence in the work of our agencies. Clearly we have important work ahead of us next year, and I am sure that the House will be interested to hear the results of our inquiries.

Michael Portillo: I join others in thanking the Committee for its extremely useful work. Paragraph 82 of the report refers to the dodgy dossier. In a way, this is water under the bridge, as the Government have conceded that errors were made, and apologies have been issued. I do not know whether they yet realise the immense damage that they did to themselves and to the intelligence services. I am not sure whether the Prime Minister realises the extent to which the reduction in his reputation and in his trustworthiness rating in opinion polls is attributable to the dodgy dossier.
	It seems absolutely extraordinary that the dossier came into the public domain apparently without either Alastair Campbell or the Prime Minister understanding its nature—the fact that it contained plagiarised material. My right hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) was absolutely right to dwell on what the Prime Minister said to the House on 3 February at column 25. There was no hint in what he said at that time that he had any understanding that the dossier was, as it were, adulterated. That in turn seems strange, because even if Mr. Campbell did not know that it contained adulterated, plagiarised material, he clearly did know that it had been prepared in a way that was quite different from the dossier that was prepared in September 2002. The processes were quite different, as he has said in evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee.
	The dodgy dossier was prepared by a team working on information. It was prepared by an organisation called the communications and information centre. There remains a question, which I add to the list already supplied to the House by the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell), about how the Prime Minister could want to commit himself unequivocally, and without caveat, to telling the House that he had published a new intelligence document, when at the very least Alastair Campbell knew that the document had been prepared in a way that simply would not allow such a description of it to stand up to further scrutiny.
	The Committee's report also refers to the famous 45-minute claim in the September 2002 dossier. The Minister for the armed forces has said that the claim was substantiated by only a single source—it was not corroborated by further evidence—and as far as I know, there has been no attempt by the Government to row back on that. The Government maintain that it was derived from intelligence and was not invented by politicians or people dealing with the media, and that there was no objection to its being in the document, but I am not sure that I have had an explanation of how it got into the foreword, which was signed by the Prime Minister and constituted an Executive summary, thus giving it tremendous prominence.
	I questioned the Foreign Secretary in the House about that, and he made it clear that no member of the intelligence community had objected in any way or proposed that the 45-minute claim should not be included in the foreword. Of course, I have to take the Foreign Secretary's word for it, but if it is true that no intelligence official objected to the claim's being given that level of prominence, the Government ought to be extremely angry with intelligence officials for failing to make that point. The Government were clearly riding for a fall by putting a point that relied on only a single source of evidence into the prime ministerial foreword, standing above his signature. Indeed, the special advisers themselves—who, I am afraid, do not appear to be a very distinguished group in this Government—should have urged that this point be not included in the foreword. They should have had regard to the importance of the integrity of the Prime Minister's word, as the Prime Minister was leading the country on a course that might involve us in military action, as indeed it did.
	Another point, made by the right hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) in his opening statement to the Foreign Affairs Committee, is that the 45-minute claim was not then used in this House during the debates in March. That leads to another question that I should like to add to the list provided by the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife, and which has been raised by the right hon. Member for Livingston: whether the Government already had cold feet about the 45-minute claim before troops were committed, and, if so, why they did not say to this House that they no longer had the confidence in that information that they had when the Prime Minister decided to put his signature to it.
	The broad point, if I may suggest, for the Committee is to look in its future deliberations at how on earth such things can happen. The Committee says that it has been assured that such things cannot happen again, but I should like to broaden the issue by pointing out that a climate has been established in government that makes it difficult to accept the degree of assurance that has been expressed by the right hon. Member for Dewsbury (Ann Taylor). It is clear that there was a breakdown in the machinery of government, but I would go further and say that there exists in this Government a strongly politicised atmosphere at the top. Many roles and decisions are taken by people who are not accountable to this House, and the feverish state in which information is dragooned for the cause—the point applies not only in this case—certainly pushes officials to the limits of what is proper. Perhaps it is for the Committee to decide whether it sometimes pushes them further.
	It might be rather surprising to hear me say that one needs also to look into the degree of pressure that was exercised in a situation in which the British Government were determined, for understandable reasons, to be in step with the United States, and felt that they had to be a strong rhetorical contributor, at least, to the case that was being made for action.

Michael Mates: What matters is not the assurance that my right hon. Friend got from the right hon. Member for Dewsbury (Ann Taylor) that this will not happen again but the assurance given to us by those who gave evidence in Committee that they had made certain—and that through that, the Prime Minister has made certain—that it will not happen again. So if it does happen again, we must question not the word of the right hon. Member for Dewsbury, but that of the entire Government.

Michael Portillo: That is a useful clarification, but I hope that my hon. Friend will accept the broader point that even if the Government can say that they have changed their procedures so that this exact sequence of events cannot occur again, they have not dealt with the broader, feverish climate at the centre of government, in which officials are being pushed very far indeed.
	Paragraph 80 of the report states:
	"Intelligence . . . played a key role in the military action",
	as indeed it did. That is why the issue is so important. My right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) said that he was raising a hypothetical question in asking the right hon. Member for Dewsbury what would happen if the information proved to be wrong. However, I do not think that my right hon. Friend's question is hypothetical. It must now be clear—this is certainly the opinion of the right hon. Member for Livingston—that at least some of the information has already been proved to be wrong.
	That fact that that question is no longer hypothetical matters very much, because the Prime Minister based his cause for going to war very firmly on the existence of weapons of mass destruction. In this case, he contrasted himself somewhat with President Bush. The President was quite happy to talk about regime change being a cause for war, but the Prime Minister said no, that was not what it was about. Indeed, he told this House that as long as Saddam Hussein gave up his weapons of mass destruction, the regime could remain in place. That is why it matters so much to establish precisely how that intelligence was derived and whether it was plain wrong. In my view, it has already emerged that the intelligence was not of high quality. That should be of immense concern to the Committee, which I am sure will want to pursue it further in future.
	The Prime Minister then told us—I refer particularly to what he said to the House on 4 and 5 June—that we should not worry so much about the causes of the war that he had advanced before, because we got rid of a barbarous regime, for which we should all be grateful and proud. We are grateful and, speaking for myself, I am proud of our role in getting rid of that barbarous regime, but that is not the case that the Prime Minister made to the House before going to war. He specifically said that the regime, barbarous though it was, would be allowed to remain in position as long as it gave up its weapons of mass destruction.
	There are other examples of the Prime Minister's shifting from one argument to another. In the build-up to war, he told us that he was very worried—I remember his hands expressing the fact—about the day on which WMD on the one hand and terrorism on the other would come together. Paragraph 75 of the report alludes to that. However, when the Prime Minister returned to the House in June, he seemed to argue rather that the search for WMD was not particularly urgent. The priority, he said, was to restore law and order. The House of Commons should understand perfectly well, he claimed, how long it would take to establish a proper team to get looking for WMD. For goodness sake, that argument is implausible from a man who had said that he was terrified that WMD would fall into the wrong hands. Was he really telling us that al-Qaeda had given us a three-month breathing space so that we could get our teams organised, and that in that period they would no longer go shopping for WMD in Iraq?
	Hans Blix used to criticise Saddam's regime firmly on the basis that it was always changing its story. It would say one thing one day, another thing another day. That is why Blix felt that the regime was unconvincing, suggesting that there might be a real problem. All I can say is that it is a good job that Hans Blix is not around today to apply the same high standards to the stories used by the Prime Minister, which also shift from day to day.
	For the avoidance of doubt, let me make it clear that I was supportive of the war and that I still believe that there was a good reason for it. However, it was not the reason on which the Prime Minister rested most heavily. The stronger argument was that there had been 12 years of steady defiance of UN resolutions by Saddam Hussein, which was intolerable in any case. After 11 September, however, when we saw the consequences of ignoring the steady escalation of terrorism, it became clearer why we should not ignore the steady escalation of defiance by a thoroughly hideous rogue state represented by Saddam Hussein. That was a perfectly strong argument.
	A book recently published by Sir Peter Stothard, who spent some time in Downing street during the period of the conflict, reveals that the Prime Minister was not happy with the WMD argument and that he longed to move on to the argument that I have just outlined or President Bush's argument for changing the regime. It demonstrates that he was uncomfortable about relying on the WMD argument, but that he believed that it was the only one likely to get through the UN.

George Osborne: Has my right hon. Friend seen the interview with Paul Wolfowitz, which reveals that WMD became a sort of bureaucratic reason to bring together the different agencies in Washington to make the case for war against Iraq? That supports my right hon. Friend's argument.

Michael Portillo: I have not seen it, but it does indeed support what I have been saying. We now have two sources for this view, which makes it relatively quite reliable as a view! It was under those circumstances that tremendous pressure was applied to officials.
	I do not want to overstate the case against the Prime Minister. It appears from what we know now—it will be supplemented by further reports from the Intelligence and Security Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee—that the Prime Minister put more weight on to the intelligence than it could properly bear. That has done immense damage to the Prime Minister, to his Government and, I fear, to the intelligence services because it puts a question mark over their work. It will be much more difficult for people to take intelligence seriously when it is presented to them in future. That is the really serious point: there will be circumstances in the future in which a Government or a Prime Minister will need to persuade this country to do something very unpalatable in order to defend our best interests. Such an action could be of a pre-emptive nature that is judged, on the basis of intelligence, to be important and necessary. The appalling debacle in which the Prime Minister and Mr. Campbell have been involved will mean that it will be much more difficult for a future Prime Minister to make a case for such action, even though it might be very urgent and important for this country.

Kevin Barron: First, I want to echo the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Ann Taylor), who chairs the Intelligence and Security Committee, of which I am a member. She praised the staff who work in the different agencies, both in the UK and elsewhere in the world, under circumstances that are sometimes incredible, and I echo those sentiments.
	I shall not speculate about what the Committee will find out in the next few weeks and months in respect of the matters that have dominated the debate so far. We issued a press release a few weeks ago, in which we stated that we would not give a running commentary on our work. I intend to stick to that, and I am sure that other members of the Committee will do the same.
	However, the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell) suggested at the end of his speech that there was a difference between our Committee and its counterparts elsewhere in the world, especially the US. I want to point out that the Committee recently met both of the US oversight committees to discuss how they have conducted their inquiries. Hon. Members will know how our Committee works, and will be aware that our inquiries are not held in the open. The idea has been around in the media for quite a while that the US committees will hold their inquiries in the open, but that is not true. They will take the vast bulk of their evidence—if not all of it—in very much the same way that the UK Committee does.
	It is true that public hearings are sometimes held as the US committees near the end of their inquiries. I believe that that is more of a bit of grandstanding for the benefit of television cameras, the public and possibly even the egos of the politicians involved. In the six years that I have been on the Committee, that has never happened. My instinct is that we should not follow the US example, but in the end it will be a matter for members of the Committee to decide. It is up to us to determine how to take evidence, what witnesses to call, and what conclusions we reach in the next few weeks.
	I want to raise two matters that have not been mentioned so far. If they are not of interest to the House, they certainly are of importance to the public at large. The Committee does not exist merely to draw up an annual report that is published and debated in the House. It is a parliamentary oversight Committee, but it looks after another major interest—how intelligence may or may not affect the British public.
	In each of the six years that I have been a member of the Committee, our interest in the use of intelligence in law enforcement has grown. It has been very much a moving picture. We have argued in earlier reports that more resources ought to be devoted to that area, as there are large gains to be made in relation to serious crime. We have worked with national law enforcement agencies and the intelligence community helps them in all sorts of ways to protect the interests of the British public.
	In the past 12 months, for the first time since I became a member of the Committee, we have looked beyond Customs and Excise and the National Criminal Intelligence Service and extended our consideration to the work of special branch. We make no recommendations in that regard. I was pleased that we decided to inquire into special branch activities, and that we received the necessary co-operation. As the report makes clear, we had meetings with the special branch of the Metropolitan police. We also visited my local special branch in south Yorkshire, and we took evidence from the chief constable. I was reassured about the work of the special branch and its co-operation with the intelligence services, especially MI5, which does not always share locally everything that it finds.
	We also looked at the structure of the special branch, which is not coterminous with Government regions. The report noted that Yorkshire and Humberside shares its special branch with the north-east region. We made no recommendation about that, but it is something that could be examined in future.
	I think that the House and the public would be happy to know that we had examined other aspects of intelligence work.

Simon Hughes: I note that the report includes no recommendation on the special branch. Does the right hon. Gentleman think that we would do better with fewer special branches, possibly organised as they are in London, on a regional rather than a local police force basis?

Kevin Barron: The hon. Gentleman answered his question when he said that the Committee had made no recommendations. I think that there are issues arising from special branch funding, as currently constituted, because it comes from the chief constable's budget. There are many pressures on such budgets and that may affect the efficiency of the local special branch. In our discussions with special branches, we were assured that resources were found if necessary. The Committee was happy with what it found, but it is for other people to decide whether the special branch is properly resourced. We made no recommendations; we stated the facts.
	My other major point is about imagery intelligence, and it, too, relates to budgets. Paragraph 61 refers to our report last year and expresses our concern that imagery intelligence purchasing and decision making come under Ministry of Defence resources. Last year, we concluded that that should be reconsidered. Although the armed services are the main users of imagery intelligence, there are many other uses for such systems. Their use is growing in other fields. We were concerned that budgeting was through the MOD rather than through the JIC or the single intelligence account.
	Paragraph 61 notes:
	"Last year, the Government response to our report stated that 'the necessary levels of finance will be made available to meet this important national requirement'. We are concerned that the MoD has only been able to provide limited funding—'what we could afford'—to buy into"—
	imagery intelligence. We hoped for a better response than we received last year, but sadly, in paragraph 4, on page 12 of the Government's response, they use the same words as last year:
	"the necessary levels of finance will be made available to meet this important national requirement".
	In the view of the Committee, the MOD budget, with all its pressures, which, as we know, increase monthly, is not the best way to fund something of that importance. We will ensure that we keep our eye on that since it is crucial that the development of imagery intelligence in the United Kingdom is not held back because its budget or the resources for it are capped by more urgent needs elsewhere.
	Before I finish my speech on our annual report—I hope that more Back Benchers will be able to make speeches—I wish to say that I am satisfied, as a Member of the House, that nothing is hidden from us and that the duty on us, now and in the not-to-distant future, will be to report everything to the House, as we did on the Bali issue, so that it can be debated and the public can judge whether or not intelligence is used properly by our agencies and the Government.

Michael Mates: I start by echoing the words of my fellow members of the Committee in our praise for the security services—all of them—on the way that they do their job. I should like to add one point, which we mention in the report: so much of what they do successfully can never be told. We have heard of amazing intelligence successes that cannot be reported to anyone, but when they do make mistakes—they are humans, so they do err—we hear about their failures; they tend to be rather more spectacular. We must understand that so much of what they do is so vital to our security that, when we do criticise them, it must be read in that context.
	I wish briefly to try—I doubt whether I shall succeed—to help the House over the vexed question of the asterisks, the deletions. Every year since such debates started, we have had to take a fair amount of ridicule on the subject, and we do so with very good nature. Every year, when we have a press conference, we get a cynical reaction from the members of the press, which we have to bear as well as we can. However, it is very important that we should be able to report in full to the Prime Minister on the conclusions and the intelligence that we have received, because we are different in that regard from a Select Committee. Therefore, because of the nature of our work, there should be no cynicism about the fact that people outside the House are not told things. They cannot be told about them because of their very nature.
	Some years ago, I had the good fortune to be the Chairman of the Select Committee on Defence. Every year, because the Trident programme was being developed, we had to report on that and, every year, quite a lot of what we reported was not allowed to be published and had to appear as asterisks, but because it came under the heading of Trident and the replacement of our ballistic warhead, nobody minded; they understood that that was secret.
	By the same token, I believe that it would be fair if people did not take quite so much mickey out of us over the asterisks, but remembered that almost everything that we hear comes in the same category as Trident, and that therefore we have to be very careful. Let it be said, however, that the asterisks are the Government's, not ours. They are the people who say that disclosure of the information would be damaging. As the right hon. Member for Newport, East (Alan Howarth) said, we robustly challenge such things, and I can tell the House that quite a number of suggested deletions have been overturned, after discussion, which is why we are able to say that nothing has been deleted without our consent. Perhaps, next year and in the coming years, we can be excused the ritual humour about the things that we have to leave out, although I very much doubt it.
	I want to make one point only about the report because the right hon. Member for Dewsbury (Ann Taylor) covered the main points excellently, and my other colleagues have done the same. There is one item that I feel particularly strongly about for reasons that I shall tell the House. In paragraph 89, we report very briefly on our concerns about the possible threat to us from the ability to transmit firearms, drugs and other dangerous goods through the post.
	I happened to come upon that issue in the other job that I do, which is chairing the Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs. During our inquiry into the financing of terrorism, we discovered a most appalling breach, which came out in the court case of the three IRA people who were arrested in Florida. They had sent firearms through the post to the IRA in the Republic of Ireland. That channel was chanced on, and within three days more than 100 weapons and weapons parts were found to be going through it. I know that the Committee, as we say in the report, is concerned about that, and we are looking into it in much more detail. From further work that I have been doing with the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, which is in the public domain, I know that we have not got this right. I hope that the House will be reassured to know that the Committee will look at this as soon as we have dealt with the question of the intelligence and the Iraqi situation, which is what concerns us now.
	I believe that it was said on "Newsnight" last night that those in our Committee were on rather light duties. May I say, therefore, that we are meeting eight times in the next two weeks and at least three times in the recess? I do not say that to receive a wave of sympathy from the rest of the House but to state the fact that we are working all the hours that we can to report on this matter as soon as possible.
	In response to the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Mr. Portillo), both of whom made very thoughtful comments and asked extremely pertinent questions, I am sure that every single one of their questions will be addressed by us and that we will want to provide answers that will convince the House as to all the reasoning. Unlike the Foreign Affairs Committee, we will not be grandstanding or making public statements while we have our inquiry. We will be able to report objectively on the facts as they have been shown to us, and as they will be shown to us over the weeks to come. When the House has had a chance to see all of that, I hope that it will realise that we are nobody's poodle and nobody's puppet. The fact that we are on the Prime Minister's Committee is irrelevant to that, but will help us enormously in the work that we have to do.

Tam Dalyell: In the short years between his retirement and his death, I used to gossip with the late Sir Maurice Oldfield. He told me that in March 1974, he had gone, as C, to Jim Callaghan on his second day as Foreign Secretary. Jim Callaghan had said to him, "Tell me, Sir Maurice, what is the Security Intelligence Service for?" Sir Maurice Oldfield said that he replied, "My job, Secretary of State, is to bring you unwelcome news." Some months later, I checked with Jim Callaghan, and indeed it was a factual not apocryphal story. In a sense, it encapsulates the fact that the key to the success of the JIC system is the firm separation of analysis and policy. Indeed, that conclusion was drawn both by Noel Annan in his best book, "Changing Enemies", and by Harry Hinsley in his official account of intelligence during world war two.
	If the Prime Minister is convinced, as all his predecessors have been since 1940, that the singular virtue of the British JIC system is the determination that held throughout the second world war and the cold war that its analytical product must always be kept separate from the policy implications to be drawn from it, does he not therefore accept that his signed preamble to the September 2002 dossier must be treated equally separately from the JIC analysis that made up the bulk of that document? If so, does the Prime Minister appreciate, and does he not wish the British public to appreciate, that it is possible for knowledgeable people inside Whitehall and beyond to place different weightings on aspects of the JIC analysis from the conclusions that he drew? Is it not possible, therefore, that concentrating on one journalist and one intelligence source fails to reflect the range of anxieties on the part of several intelligence professionals about the weightings and thrust of the Prime Minister's crucial preamble? I am confident that the Intelligence and Security Committee, under my right hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Ann Taylor), will bring the necessary skill, scepticism and detachment that are always needed during the careful evidence-driven analysis of kaleidoscopic intelligence at a time of tension, anxiety and uncertainty.
	Finally, because all hon. Members should have the opportunity to speak, Hans Blix says that he was getting the highest quality intelligence from Washington, yet his inspectors could find nothing of significance. Therefore, the coalition must have known that its intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction simply did not provide its Governments with justification for war. Indeed, that point is eloquently made in the letter to The Times yesterday that was written by Field Marshall Lord Bramall.

James Arbuthnot: The report speaks for itself. I must especially stress the point, which has been well made in a number of quarters, that we are well served by our intelligence agencies.
	There is no need, and no time, for me to comment on every aspect of the report. However, on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, the Intelligence and Security Committee recognises that it has a heavy responsibility. I am not controlled by the Government but neither are the rest of the members of the Committee. The Committee is excellently chaired by the right hon. Member for Dewsbury (Ann Taylor), who is no Government poodle.
	On ministerial oversight, I was extremely pleased that the Minister for Europe said that the ministerial committee on the intelligence services would meet in due course. However, he gave us no indication that such meetings would be regular. The ministerial committee will be effective only if it meets regularly to build up the expertise and relationships needed for proper ministerial control.
	The main point that I want to address is terrorism and the treatment of terrorists. We are told that we are at war and that the battle against terrorism is beginning to look long lasting—I think that that is right. The casualties have been dreadful but that should not make us flinch from the task. The Duke of Wellington once said:
	"Nothing except a battle lost can be half as melancholy as a battle won."
	We have not yet won the battle and it is, indeed, a melancholy business. However, as we fight the battle, we must remember what we are fighting for: the values of freedom, the right to govern ourselves according to our liberal principles and the rule of law. In fighting for those values, we must not ourselves abandon them or the terrorists will win.
	That is why I was pleased to hear what my right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary said about Guantanamo bay. Nearly two years after 11 September, our coalition partner, the United States, continues to hold people in legal limbo, with no end in sight, in a place, and a manner, that are subject to no nationally or internationally recognised law or process. What justifies that? The United States says that information from intelligence gathered from those at Guantanamo bay is an essential tool in the war against terrorism. But there is disagreement in the United States Administration about whether the intelligence product is nearing its useful end.
	As a result of Guantanamo bay, the United States has been subjected to accusations of torture and inhumanity. I am sure that those accusations are unfair and untrue. Those who make them undermine their more valid arguments against Guantanamo bay. The United States tells us that the detainees are not prisoners of war and are not subject to the Geneva conventions. It bases that view on its theory that the detainees from Afghanistan are illegal combatants. Presumably, the same view would, or should, be taken about the Northern Alliance fighters. The difference appears to be that the Northern Alliance fought with us while the Taliban fought against us. That is an uncomfortable position to adopt.
	The United States tells us that despite the fact that the Geneva conventions do not apply to the detainees, they are being treated in accordance with those conventions. But in one very important respect they are not. The conventions require that once someone is identified as a suspect in a crime, he has a right not to be questioned in the absence of a lawyer of his choice. No detainee has been allowed a lawyer of anyone's choice, and they have all been questioned. The United States has made it clear that it intends to use the confessions taken as evidence against the detainees in their trials. I do not believe that confessions taken in such circumstances should be admissible.
	The Pentagon tells us that the procedures for trials by military commission, issued in March, will include the presumption of innocence. That is, of course, good to hear, but the day before it issued those procedures, President Bush, the man in charge of them, said:
	"Remember . . . the ones in Guantanamo Bay are killers."
	That was no passing remark. He and Secretary Rumsfeld have said the same thing on several different occasions. It would be good to be able to believe that the United States thought that the presumption of innocence was more than just a phrase used by those lawyer folk. When President Bush, who is, as I say, in the end in charge of the military tribunals set to try the detainees, tells us that they are extremely dangerous terrorists, he may well be right, but surely that conclusion should be the result of an assessment or investigation independent of its victim, the United States, or, at the very least, independent of the Executive of the United States.
	Some people ask: what else is the United States to do with the detainees? It may well be true that some, if released, might immediately return to terrorism. How on earth can we expect the United States to put up with that? The answer is that of course we cannot. However, I am certain that the international community would be eager to use its many tribunals to try those detainees according to an internationally recognised process. The question then would be whether the United States would be prepared to accept the outcome.
	Let us not forget that there will be prisoners as a result of the war in Iraq who will be motivated in precisely the same way as those detained from Afghanistan, yet the United States recognises them as prisoners of war. To treat the Taliban differently from the Iraqi Fedayeen is clearly wrong in principle. We were once accused of doing the same during the period of detention in Northern Ireland, but at least recognisable rules applied and those detained had access to advisers. More important, when we put a stop to detention, we increased our moral authority in a way that the United States could do now if it chose.
	So far, the focus of the British Government has been on the British detainees. Perhaps that is understandable, but it misses the point. The real point is that the decision to treat the detainees differently is wrong in principle. By appearing to condone one law for the United States and another for everyone else, we are feeding resentment against the United States and hence against ourselves throughout the world.
	I have three questions about the matter, which I should be grateful if the Home Secretary would answer when he replies. First, do the British Government accept the United States view that the Geneva convention does not apply to the detainees of Guantanamo bay? Why are they keeping so quiet on so vital an issue? If any other country behaved like this, as the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell) said, both the United Kingdom and the United States would be protesting vigorously.
	Secondly, on 17 June, the Foreign Office Minister with responsibilities for trade and investment stated:
	"The status of the detainees under international law depends on the facts of each individual case and is ultimately a matter for the US, as the detaining power."—[Official Report, 17 June 2003; Vol. 407, c. 142W.]
	Does international law have nothing to say about the rights or wrongs of any decision made by the United States? If, as the Minister then said, the detainees are entitled to humane treatment, what international obligation is it, other than the inherent humanity of the United States—which is undoubted, at least in my mind—that gives it that entitlement?
	Thirdly, do the British Government believe that the intelligence product from Guantanamo bay is still valuable? If so, for what? Is it limited to the purpose of the prosecution of the detainees?
	The United States is, and always has been, the world's greatest supporter of freedom. Time after time, it is the United States that comes to the rescue of individual countries and of the world. However, freedom rests on the observance of the rule of law, and the United States would win itself many friends by establishing beyond doubt that it was bringing the detainees within the scope of a process of law that was internationally recognised.

Andrew MacKinlay: I have some difficulty. I have declared in the Chamber many times before that I think that the current arrangements for our parliamentary oversight are not satisfactory. Indeed, I do not see the Intelligence and Security Committee as being a Committee of Parliament. That is of great importance. I do not think that it is a distinction without a difference that the Committee is made up of parliamentarians. It is a creature of statute passed by Parliament.
	I hesitate to amplify upon that because good friends and colleagues can often take offence that is not intended when we criticise an institution of which they are a member. They think that that is a criticism of their conduct and stewardship. On the contrary. I was interested to hear what the my right hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Ann Taylor) and other Members have said about the diligence to service which the members of the Committee are giving. That is highly commendable. I endorse what my right hon. Friend said about the high level of attendance and concentration.
	One of the things that I learned as a trade union official is that one should be at the beginning of a meeting and at the end. That is extremely important. During my period on the Transport Select Committee and the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, I was surprised when some of my colleagues found—it is a matter for them—there could be other compelling matters that took them away from a Committee's deliberations, and sometimes quite frequently. In my view, if someone is serving on one of these bodies, that should be seen as the primary commitment in giving service to the House. They should be present for as much time as is humanly possible.
	I shall criticise the nature of the Intelligence and Security Committee. When I read the membership of the Committee, I noticed that the hon. Member for East Hampshire (Mr. Mates) was the only non-Privy Councillor. When he goes to bed tonight, I hope that he will dream that such a grave omission will be remedied by the Mackinlay Government after I come out of my wilderness years. That demonstrates that the Committee is composed of people who have given distinguished service. I hesitate to use the phrase "the great and the good" but, nevertheless, those people are deemed satisfactory by the Prime Minister. Of course, the qualities that they bring to the Committee make them a satisfactory choice, but in any other Parliament, people selected by their peers will also have given distinguished service and will be capable of fulfilling that role. In the US Senate and Congress, people chosen to serve on comparable committees to the Intelligence and Security Committee are regarded as qualified for their important role and having sufficient discretion to fulfil it.

Michael Mates: Which parliamentary Committee is not selected by its peers? The Committee of Selection selects members of Select Committees through the Whips. It is the Prime Minister, in consultation with the Leader of the Opposition, who selects us, and that, too, is done through the Whips. What is the difference?

Andrew MacKinlay: There is a substantial difference. The hon. Gentleman is wrong, although the selection process is seriously flawed, needs to be developed and is subject to the party system. However, there are occasions when the trend is reversed. During my first weeks in Parliament we were told by the Whips who to appoint as Chairman of the Select Committee on Transport, but we chose another Member. More recently, in the lifetime of this Parliament, my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, East (Donald Anderson) were selected as Chairmen in contravention of the initial process of selection. However, my right hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury, for whom I have the highest regard—contrary to her better judgment, I hope that she still has some regard for me—was selected by the Prime Minister. Under the rules of selection, it is not possible to say, "No, we will not have the right hon. Member for Dewsbury, we will have the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron) instead."
	Public perception of the independence of Committees is extremely important. The ISC would probably prefer to be treated as a Select Committee, and in the next Parliament it may merge into the system and its members undertake the same contests and arguments that other Select Committee members undertake. I hope that ISC members have some sympathy for that idea. However, when it became known that the ISC and the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs were going to look into the question of Iraq, I was disappointed by the appearance of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister at the Dispatch Box. I listened to him carefully, and while he said that he welcomed and/or invited the ISC to look into the question of Iraq, he did not make any genuflection to the Foreign Affairs Committee, and did not give a nod or wink of acknowledgement that it should look into the matter, which was a deeply regrettable mistake. At the very least, the work of the two Committees could be complementary rather than competitive, and could inform the work of the House and public opinion, which everyone should welcome.
	I dare not go into the question of Iraq. Over the past few days, I have told numerous journalists and even parliamentary colleagues that the deliberations of the Foreign Affairs Committee are private—[Interruption.] I am speaking for myself, and will not even comment about people who have commented, allegedly, on our deliberations. However, on behalf of colleagues I shall give a trailer. At 10 o'clock on Monday, our report will be published, and I hope that Members will find it valuable reading. However, picking up a point made by the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell), there could be a more mature and sensible way of producing the ISC report without the extensive use of dots and asterisks. There could be negotiations with No. 10 to produce a report that has some flow. Its present form is woefully inadequate.
	If, as I accept, the Committee is putting in a tremendous amount of work behind closed doors, the report could and should be fuller. I do not accept that it must be so thin. One of the deficiencies of the Committee is that it always, always deliberates and holds hearings in private. There is no reason why that should be the absolute rule. Because of the nature of its work, the pattern may be that the Committee meets in private session, but that should not be the presumption. That is why the work of other Select Committees is so important. The Prime Minister overlooked that. Matters that would not have been aired if they had been considered solely by the Intelligence and Security Committee have been brought into the public domain by the Foreign Affairs Committee and it is clearly appropriate that they should be viewed under the television lights, reported in the Official Report and so on. I hope that next year the Intelligence and Security Committee might improve on the written production of its report and explain to the House the work on which it is embarked.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley spoke about the aspects of the report relating to the special branch. That was extremely important. I am troubled by the fact that our special branches are woefully inadequate in many areas, particularly at our ports of entry. I have raised the matter in the Chamber before. I am amazed that the Government have not addressed security, particularly at our seaports. They must also undertake a comprehensive review of the policing of our airports.
	The seaports are more or less open. I can show hon. Members ports around the United Kingdom where there is no immigration official, no Customs and Excise and no special branch. They are open. It is breathtaking that that is tolerated. I have said to the House and I will say it again: what are required are dedicated police forces for our seaports. The British Transport police should be brought back in—they used to be at some of our ports—or a parallel force should be set up. That would be the sensible thing to do. The special branch officer in a portakabin responsible for many miles of river or coastline is woefully inadequate. That is the present position, and I am not prepared to acquiesce in it by my silence. It leaves us open to organised crime, people-smuggling, and the dangers of terrorist groups bringing in facilities and materials or taking those out to other locations. They could be deterred, if not detected, by high-profile dedicated transport police in our seaports.

Oliver Letwin: As I think the hon. Gentleman knows, he is not alone in that view. Every word of what he says is true. We, too, have been complaining about the position persistently for the past two years, and it remains a matter of astonishment to us that nothing has been done about it. I know that Liberal Democrat Members share his views.

Andrew MacKinlay: I am much obliged. Perhaps the Government might reflect on the fact that, across the House, there is some sympathy for the matter to be addressed. They should do so urgently and not be persuaded by the chief constables. I know what chief constables are like. They are decent fellows, but they want to maximise their resources and are jealous of their territories. They do not want another police agency in their parish. It has always been thus and always will be. The Government should put aside their protestations, which is well-trodden ground, and do what is right—create proper policing, which could be partly funded by a small top-slicing on every container's tariff or every person's fare passing through the port of entry or exit.
	My final point relates to paragraphs 90 and 91 of the report and the Wilson doctrine. If I misread the document, I apologise, but the point I want to make is still valid. It is a matter of fact that the telephone conversations of Mo Mowlam, when Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and Jonathan Powell, the Prime Minister's chief of staff, with the hon. Member for Mid-Ulster (Mr. McGuinness) were recorded. The Wilson doctrine makes it clear that, unless and until Parliament is told otherwise, there will be no eavesdropping of the conversations of Members of Parliament. There was a clear breach in that regard and I think that we have a right to be told what happened. In any event, the Wilson doctrine is somewhat old and technologies have moved on. It is no longer necessary to attach a physical attachment to a telephone line to listen to what is being said. It is possible to eavesdrop on conversations and to investigate e-mails and other technologies at some considerable distance. The Wilson doctrine is important to our parliamentary democracy, because Members of Parliament, as legislators, should not be subject to such intrusive surveillance by the executive branch of government. In any event, the doctrine needs to be revisited to bring it up to date with current technologies. I urge colleagues to address the issue with some seriousness and vigour, and I repeat that, if they do so, it should be in the public domain. In my view, that area should be discussed.

Kevin Barron: It is.

Andrew MacKinlay: I shall be pleased to give way if my right hon. Friend can clarify the point.

Kevin Barron: Without wanting to go into detail, I point out that paragraph 91 explains what the Committee has done in the past 12 months and what the current situation is.

Andrew MacKinlay: I am not satisfied about that. Nothing that has been uttered today or that features in the documentation reassures us that Members of Parliament are not subject to unauthorised surveillance either by the security and intelligence services or special branch. Regardless of the political persuasion of any of the people to whom I referred, it is fundamentally wrong that what happened should have taken place. I suspect that those involved overlooked the Wilson doctrine and that one of our colleagues, the hon. Member for Mid-Ulster, who had not taken his oath, did not feature on their radar screens as a Member of Parliament, so they assumed that they could proceed. I suspect that that was the case and/or that the Northern Ireland Office had, as a matter of practice, recorded the telephone conversations of the Secretary of State without thinking that he or she might be talking to a Member of Parliament.

Julian Lewis: I should like to put to the hon. Gentleman a hypothetical scenario. What does he think the security and intelligence services should do if they have reason to believe at some future stage that someone who has been elected to the House of Commons is secretly in contact with an extremist, fundamentalist terrorist organisation? Does he believe that such people should be off limits purely because they are Members of Parliament?

Andrew MacKinlay: I am grateful for that intervention, as the hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. I have said that the matter should be revisited, as the Wilson doctrine needs to be updated and could take such issues into account. In the particular cases that we know about, however, national security, by definition, could not have been at issue because they involved the Secretary of State, who was talking to a Member of Parliament, and the Prime Minister's man. If Mo Mowlam or Jonathan Powell were threatening national security, we might as well pack up and go home, but that was demonstrably not the case. Therefore, those conversations demonstrably should not have been bugged or subject to surveillance, and we need to be reassured and told what the position is. As I said, if there is some validity in the scenario that the hon. Gentleman postulated, it should be considered so that we know exactly what the ground rules are.
	I make no apology for again raising that matter in the House. Clearly, there have been some very unsatisfactory goings on. The Prime Minister has refused, failed or felt unable to clarify the position on repeatedly being asked in the House specifically about the Mo Mowlam and Jonathan Powell conversations. The issue cannot and should not go away, and he should make a statement to clarify it. In the meantime, our colleagues in the Committee need to deal with the issue with some vigour and come back to the House and set out in their next report precisely what has gone on and what they recommend to the Prime Minister for the future.

Alan Beith: The hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) made as lively and constructive a contribution to the debate as he has to the Foreign Affairs Committee's deliberations on Iraq. I agree with him that the work of the two Committees can be complementary.
	In the light of what he said about the Wilson doctrine, I have changed the order of what I was going to say to address his comments at the beginning of my speech, without dealing with the detail of the case to which he referred. The Wilson doctrine means that if there is any change in the policy that MPs' communications will not be intercepted, the Prime Minister will, when it seems compatible with the security of the country to do so, make a statement to the House about it. The Committee spent some time considering that matter, and there is a paragraph in the report relating to it, which merely records that the Prime Minister has not advised us of any such change in policy; and it is clearly common knowledge that he has not told the House of any such change.
	The problem about the Wilson doctrine is that we could at any time be in the position that the policy had been changed, but it had not been deemed to be compatible with the security of the country to make an announcement. That is not an abuse of the doctrine. In that situation, it would be an entirely proper application of the doctrine for the Prime Minister to have relaxed the policy, for some overriding reason of national security, but not yet to have made an announcement to the House. That leads me to wonder whether the Wilson doctrine is a good basis on which to rest the general presumption that MPs' communications will not be intercepted. If an MP's communications were to be intercepted, of course, it would still have to be by means of a warrant issued by the relevant Secretary of State. Nevertheless, it is worth considering whether we should have a system whereby no interception of the communications of a Member of either House could ever be undertaken unless it was approved by someone at a very high and manifestly independent level, such as the Lord Chief Justice.
	Knowledge that MPs' communications are not intercepted is an important safeguard for our constituents, and I am not convinced that the Wilson doctrine provides an unambiguous assurance that no MP's communications will be intercepted unless there are compelling grounds to do so, relating to threats to national security or evidence of involvement in serious crime. The time has come to look for a better basis than one whereby, in effect, the doctrine might be in general abeyance without our knowledge until such time as it was reasonable, in the circumstances of the case that had given rise to the problem, for the Prime Minister to tell the House that he had had to do that. The hon. Member for Thurrock raises a perfectly reasonable point, but he slightly misunderstands the present position and certainly underestimates the amount of attention that the Committee gave to it.
	Let me express my wish, as others have, that the Foreign Secretary will soon be recovered from his indisposition, and suggest that next time he goes to Kandahar he takes his own sandwiches with him.
	Let me also echo the Chairman's tribute to all the work that is done by the agencies and pay tribute to the very small but immensely hard-working staff of the Intelligence and Security Committee, without whom we could not achieve what we do. They deserve great credit for their work.
	I want to touch on a subject that was raised by the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron), as well as by the hon. Member for Thurrock, and which is mentioned in the report—namely, special branch. I co-operated with the right hon. Gentleman in his enthusiasm to ensure that we spent some time on considering special branch, which has some important responsibilities, including port policing. My noble Friend Lord Carlile referred to the issue in his reports on the prevention of terrorism Acts, and more attention and resources need to be given to it.
	The right hon. Member for Rother Valley mentioned an important point that I need to clarify. There is an important reason why special branch does not and should not share all its intelligence with the security service—namely, that it has a different job. One of its jobs is to protect public order. It has to collect intelligence on public order in order to know whether there is going to be so massive, and possibly so uncontrolled, a demonstration that police resources will be needed for the purpose. People who may need to be the subject of surveillance for that reason are not, by that mere definition, threats to national security and properly the subject of investigation by the security service. There is a distinction, and it is right that it be maintained. Whereas special branches provide a very important executive arm for the security service, it is right that they recognise the difference between work that they do on their own account, for the purposes of their own responsibilities, and work that they do for the security service.
	The right hon. Member for Rother Valley mentioned the regional intelligence cells that have been created for special branch—they are not regional special branches, but regional cells—and the fact that the one in Yorkshire serves two whole Government regions. That happens to be the Association of Chief Police Officers arrangement, but we were given to understand that the cells were structured in that way primarily for resources reasons. The right hon. Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West (Joyce Quin) and I are not happy with that.

Joyce Quin: I believed that regionalisation made a lot of sense for effective organisation throughout the country. However, I endorse the right hon. Gentleman's point that in the north-east, it is important that a regional organisation corresponds to existing regions and regional identity.

Alan Beith: The right hon. Lady and I are at one on that. I continue to have doubts about the merit of organising special branches into regional special branches as opposed to intelligence cells. If county-based police forces—in some cases, multi-county police forces—continue to form the structure of our policing, regional special branch forces would be divorced from the accountability structure of our current system. Although there are problems about allocating budgets to special branch, I would not be happy if special branches existed in limbo and were not part of local accountability. There are arguments for and against regional police forces, but if they existed, my point would fall.
	Let me briefly consider paragraph 67 of the report, which deals with collection gaps, warnings and the suggestion that the services' ability to warn us of dangers in future could be impaired by the stresses on their resources. One of the lessons of Afghanistan is that the west collectively had not maintained adequate intelligence on what was happening in that country. For specific reasons, the intelligence that we received was perhaps better than that of some of our partners. Nevertheless, an overall intelligence gap allowed a failed state to become the headquarters of an organisation that carried out the horrific destruction of thousands of lives as well as many other terrorist incidents. We must learn from that.
	Al-Qaeda is regrouping in other countries and there are failed states all around the world. We have only to consider a country such as Somalia to ascertain the extent of the danger that could be lurking. Other states are at risk of tipping over into failed state status. All that makes heavy demands on the intelligence effort. Things are much more complicated and difficult than the cold war effort of simply seeing what the Russians were up to, to put it crudely. Our intelligence effort was never limited to such an extent, but the focus was much clearer. Nowadays, there are all sorts of trouble spots throughout the world. They are precisely the places where international terrorist organisations go to find a safe haven in which to carry out their activities. If we cannot keep a careful watch on those trouble spots, and keep between the nations that ally themselves for intelligence purposes, we shall not get other sorts of warning.
	We have much work to do on Iraq. We deal with the dossiers in paragraphs 81 and 82. The Foreign Affairs Committee discussions will give us much more detail about who said what to whom and when. However, we left hon. Members in no doubt that the February dossier—although we did not use the Foreign Secretary's terminology—was a dreadful mistake and that systems had to be put in place to ensure that that did not happen again. We were confident that that had been done.
	However, there are many other questions beyond the dossiers, not least the issue of whether the intelligence was strong enough to support the assessments that were made throughout that period. That is a more fundamental question. Was the intelligence reliable enough to bear the weight that was placed on it? We should examine that question closely.
	We shall do the job thoroughly and without fear or favour, and we shall take the time that is necessary to get at the truth. That is why we make no promises about the date of the report's publication. Our only promise is that, to the best of our ability, we shall do a thorough job without fear or favour. We hope and believe that we shall have access to all the available information that we need. If we do not, we shall say so, as the Chairman pointed out earlier.
	I want to consider the nature of the Committee and its operation. To some extent, I am responding to the point of the hon. Member for Thurrock. Hon. Members have often said that it would be much better if the Committee were a Select Committee of the House. Indeed, some Committee members have expressed that view. If that happened we would lose one feature of the Committee, in that it now comprises hon. Members of both Houses. A very able and helpful peer serves on the Committee, and other valuable contributors have come from the other end of the building.
	However, while I have a good deal of sympathy with that view, Members should not exaggerate the difference that would be made to the Committee's operation. In many respects, it would operate in much the same way. It would need its own secure accommodation, like the comparable congressional committees in the United States; it would meet mostly in private, like the American committees. The vast bulk of their work is done in private. They see certain benefits in occasional open sessions, and I do not disagree with those who think that that could apply here; but there is no escaping the fact that the bulk of the work on which the Committee's value depends would continue to be done in private.
	Unless the House changes its system of appointing Select Committees, which it conspicuously declined to do last year, the system according to which this Committee is appointed will not differ greatly from the system governing the appointment of most Select Committees—with the significant exception that, just occasionally, the House can overturn the Whips' recommendations in regard to Select Committees. The Prime Minister, and earlier Prime Ministers, did not appoint this Committee on the basis of picking their friends; they went through the usual processes by which all three parties and their Whips' Offices submit their nominations, and the mechanisms were strikingly similar to those that apply to Select Committees.
	The Committee would not be all that different in another important respect. Material would be excluded from its reports, just as it is excluded from Select Committee reports and, indeed, reports produced by committees of the United States Congress. I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell), the right hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) and others about asterisks. Some of our reports are spattered with them, and I wonder that the printer does not run out of them—although, of course, we are past the days of old-fashioned typesetting.
	The statement in the introduction to the report to the effect that the Committee consents to the redactions, or exclusions, should be seen in context. It means that something we consider essential to the House's knowledge of whether we are making a critical judgment has not been excluded. But I think that some of our consent has been given with reluctance, and some of us, at least, feel that the agencies could be a little more relaxed about some of the material that they seek to exclude.
	First, we insist that omissions be marked with asterisks and not achieved by changing the text or disguising the fact that something has been omitted. We believe that it is part of our responsibility to the House to enable it to know that we have obtained, for instance, a figure in a column that is missing—that we have looked into the matter, and that the work has been done. We do not want our reports to be disguised or sanitised in a way that denies our coverage of the issues involved.
	Secondly, throughout my time on the Committee—and I have served on it since its creation—no criticism made by it of the agencies or anyone else has been excluded through the redaction of information that is sensitive for security reasons. I hope that I shall be able to give that assurance for as long as I remain on the Committee; I can certainly give it now.
	Thirdly, our statutory basis does not allow us to substitute our judgment for that of the agencies on whether detailed information, if released, would damage their operations. That is the problem that we have: at the end of the day, the agencies are responsible for deciding whether revealing how much they are spending for a particular purpose, how many staff they have transferred from one branch of activity to another or what mechanism they have found uniquely valuable in obtaining intelligence would be damaging to their effort. It is not for us to decide. We may have a view, and on occasion we express it quite strongly; but it is an understood condition of the basis on which we were created that we cannot substitute our judgment for that of the agencies and say "Hard luck, but we think it would be much better for everyone to know how you obtained this piece of intelligence, and what is more we are going to tell them".
	That would be to put the essentially amateur scrutineers and overseers of intelligence into the position of the professionals who have to do their job and perhaps risk their colleagues' lives. They are not right in their judgment in every case, but we have those arguments with them, and it is very difficult to avoid that.
	If it seemed that the continued concealment of a piece of information was likely to cause real harm and prevent reasonable criticism, we should at least draw attention to that, even if we could not state the precise reasons and the details. Our first step would be to alert Ministers and the Prime Minister to the fact that we were being impeded by the continued concealment from being able to bring sufficient pressure to bear on something that we considered very unsatisfactory.
	Again, we have not found ourselves in that situation. There are times when we might set aside a matter in the belief that we could deal with it in more detail later, when immediate operational requirements would no longer be relevant. That is a mechanism that I have certainly advocated.

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The right hon. Gentleman's time is up.

Alan Howarth: I want to attempt to develop the case for a full and sustained ministerial engagement in determining the agencies' appropriate priorities. I very much welcome the fact that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Ann Taylor) has already told the House, the Prime Minister intends that the ministerial committee on the intelligence services, the CSI, should meet, but I am not entirely sure that the full reasons why it is important that it should meet have been properly taken on board in the Government's response to our report. We are told that the Committee should meet when appropriate, and that Ministers will be involved at the beginning of the annual process as well as in authorising the final requirements.
	After the cold war, after 9/11, after the telecommunications revolution, we live in radically different circumstances. We are no longer in the world of set-piece, ritualised confrontation of superpowers and permanent alliances. There is no likelihood that tanks will roll across the north German plains, nor, I desperately hope, will we ever again face anything like the Cuban crisis. We live instead in a world where money, technology and people move rapidly across the globe, the most dangerous threats arise—I think—from cultural clashes, and the targets of our enemies are most likely to be parts of the critical national infrastructure, such as banking networks, water supplies or computer systems. The agencies will be crucial to our capacity to defend ourselves and to counter such threats. If they are to be able to do their work effectively, Ministers must be continuously and thoughtfully engaged in their tasking and in the Government's collective response to intelligence findings.
	What we say in the report about collection gaps, and what the Government say in their response, is hugely important in this context. The threat to our national security is ubiquitous. I think I am correct in recalling—and this is a miserable statistic—that 60 per cent. of the world's countries now have a gross domestic product per capita lower than it was 10 years ago. The misery of the world is growing, and the anger that that breeds in turn breeds the pathology in which terror takes root.
	As the Government fairly note, it takes time to build up new capacity in different parts of the world, to develop human intelligence and train recruits to their full ability. It is also, of course, extremely expensive. I take the view, however, and I think that my fellow members of the Committee would agree, that intelligence still represents extraordinarily good value for money, certainly when compared with the cost of military hardware.
	We must keep our priorities under continuous review and ensure that our dispositions are genuinely up to date. We will need to be more and more ambitious in the scope of our intelligence.
	We will also need to revisit some of our inherited and most cherished orthodoxies in relation to civil liberties and international law. Here, I enter perilous territory and speak with great reluctance and apprehension. All my instincts are to be suspicious of big government and of armed government, but we should consider the nature of modern threats to our security. Let us consider, for example, what threats to the critical national infrastructure might involve; let us and our Government assess our vulnerabilities honestly and courageously.
	Cyber-assaults could be perpetrated on crucial institutions and organisations by aggrieved insiders, criminals, hackers, industrial rivals and, of course, by terrorists or military opponents; in fact, they could be carried out by small groups equipped with laptop computers. It would be very difficult indeed for Governments to know how to respond. I know that the Government are giving a great deal of active thought to these topics, and that Ministers and officials are working on them, but let us suppose that there was an assault on our banking system and the networks that enable it to operate. Which would be the lead Department: the Treasury, the Department of Trade and Industry, the Home Office, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Ministry of Defence? In fact, all those Departments would have a contribution to make, which suggests that we need the engagement of a wider group of Ministers and a wider range of interests within government if we are to ensure that our defences match the nature of modern requirements.
	There is a difficulty, in that these days the critical national infrastructure is provided mainly by the private sector, which is naturally unwilling to share information. Its culture and practices are not such as to make compliance with our security requirements a natural reflex, whatever the patriotism and good will of individuals within such organisations. This issue requires fresh thought across government—for example, from Ministers in the DTI. Their customary mantra about burdens on business would not necessarily be helpful in such circumstances.
	In future, our security will depend increasingly on the informed good will and good sense of many people in many different organisations—private, as well as public. That also raises questions about the need to know. How do we appropriately apply the need-to-know principle in a world in which the private and public sectors and a much greater variety of organisations need to have intelligent and constructive involvement? How does a person in one organisation actually know what a person in another organisation needs to know? Answers can no doubt be found to these questions, but they do need to be thought through.
	So if we are serious—as we have to be—about defence and the protection of our security in these modern circumstances, we may well need to think again about the balance between liberty and security, and between market efficiency and security. We will need to reconsider the orthodoxies of international law in relation to pre-emption. It is not much use waiting until one has been attacked by weapons of mass destruction before acting in self-defence, but the terms of the United Nations charter give rise to difficulties in this regard. I question whether the dispensation that was formulated in San Francisco in 1945 for the 20th century meets the needs of the 21st.
	We must ask questions about the circumstances in which it will be legitimate to intervene in foreign countries not only to protect against direct threats to ourselves, but to sustain democracy and human rights. Where democracy and human rights are not sustained, new threats may well emerge further down the line. After all, this is not an entirely new and contemporary issue. Would it seriously be argued that, if Hitler had not invaded Poland, it would have been appropriate for the international community to stand aside while he perpetrated genocide of the Jews within Germany alone? Under international law, it is not acceptable to intervene in the affairs of another country on the grounds of disapproving of what goes on in it. We must think again about all these wide issues, which take us across the whole realm of defence, foreign policy and homeland security. Intelligence matters obviously arise in respect of all of them.
	Ministers are going to have to engage with those issues. It is unrealistic and inappropriate to expect officials and agencies to formulate the answers. All we really know about the world's future is that it will be radically different from the past. In that light, it is difficult to develop a vision for the future. We have to ask the right questions, which needs imagination and originality. By and large, bureaucracies do not do originality or challenge orthodoxies, but Ministers must. They should lead our thinking; our security depends on it.

Simon Hughes: I am grateful for the opportunity to add to what my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell) said. He concentrated on foreign affairs, whereas I shall seek to highlight issues relating to home affairs, in line with my usual responsibilities.
	I am conscious that we have had two intelligence debates in this Parliament. The first reflected back on the events of 11 September. We were concerned last year to make sure that the intelligence services were able to make an adequate contribution in response to those events. The report produced last year pointed out that we were somewhat overstretched in delivering the desired intelligence capability. One issue was whether enough people were recruited, trained and around—not least in some of the trouble spots of the world—to do the job properly.
	This year, it is interesting to note that reflection has moved on to consider how we organise ourselves to collect, manage and process the information, and to make an examination of the effect of that oversight. My right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) said that there may not be a huge difference in practice between having a Select Committee or a Committee appointed by the Prime Minister. Our party has always taken the view that the scrutiny should be done by a Select Committee and I pay tribute to those Committee members, including my right hon. Friend, who serve and assist us greatly.
	We appear to have made some progress this year—indeed, on this very afternoon—on the question of how the Government are to get their act together. The Government's written response to the strong view of the Intelligence and Security Committee that the ministerial committee on the intelligence services should meet regularly acknowledged that it was appropriate to have that committee, but gave no commitment to call it. As others have pointed out, it was helpful when the Minister for Europe pointed out that the long-existing committee would now meet. We have one further step to go. The Minister put it on the record that it would meet in due course, but I invite the Home Secretary to confirm in his winding-up speech that it will meet soon, and then regularly. That would reassure us all.
	That is not a technical or a party-political point. The country and parliamentarians of all persuasions in both Houses would be reassured to know that our intelligence information was regularly presented to the appropriate group of people, led by the Prime Minister and supported by other Ministers, and was thus subject to regular oversight. That would support the existing role of the Home Secretary and the Foreign Secretary and it might undermine the arguments for appointing a Minister for homeland security or a Minister in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister or the Cabinet Office dedicated to security. Such an appointment would not be as strong or effective as the current proposed arrangements, which make for proper governmental control. I hope that we are offered that final commitment either from the Home Secretary tonight in a few minutes' time, or as soon as possible from the Government or the Prime Minister himself.
	This is terribly difficult territory for any state to manage, as has been noted by the right hon. Members for Newport, East (Alan Howarth) and for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot). It is about the interface between the liberty of the individual, and the power of the state to intervene in that. The most sensitive issues are involved.
	If things go wrong, we criticise the authorities for not reacting fast enough, or for underreacting. Sometimes it looks as though there has been an overreaction when something goes wrong, and that there has been a compensation in the other direction. Although the Committee has not yet done its work on Iraq, the report makes it clear that it is not acceptable that reports that draw on the work of intelligence professionals—to whom we pay tribute—are not treated properly, quoted accurately or reported in a politically responsible way.
	Paragraphs 80 to 82 make very clear the Committee's view on those matters, which Liberal Democrat Members endorse. Paragraph 82 states:
	"We believe that material produced by the Agencies can be used in publications and attributed appropriately, but it is imperative that the Agencies are consulted before any of their material is published. This process was not followed when the second dossier was produced in February 2003. Although the document did contain some intelligence-derived material it was not clearly attributed or highlighted amongst the other material, nor was it checked with the Agency providing the intelligence or cleared by the JIC prior to publication."
	Huge amounts of intelligence come in. If the Government and politicians of the day put information into the public domain, that information must be authenticated by the people who are its source. One criticism that we can make already is that that was clearly not done properly earlier this year in relation to Iraq.
	I shall reinforce the points made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-East Fife and by the right hon. Member for North-East Hampshire briefly but firmly. It is unacceptable that people who are thought to have broken the international rules on warfare and military behaviour should not at least be brought to a place where they can be charged and processed according to the normal rules of civilisation.
	My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-East Fife said that such people were effectively stateless, but they are not. They have fewer rights than stateless people in some ways. They have states, but no legal process applies to them. That is unacceptable. There can be nowhere on this earth where people are outwith the judicial process. The Government must do far more, for the sake of British citizens and others, to ensure that that injustice is ended.
	I turn now to the matter of special branch and the security services. I am grateful that the Committee investigated that matter. I encourage those responsible to do two things. First, they should pick up what hon. Members of all parties have been saying—we must have a better common border force around this country. That recommendation has been made by the Home Affairs Committee. We cannot continue to have three different agencies—the police, Customs and Excise and the immigration service—and also have the special branch in a particular role.

Andrew MacKinlay: The special branch is never there.

Simon Hughes: The special branch, as the hon. Gentleman says, is often not where it is needed. Lord Carlile of Berriew made that very point about many airports and seaports.
	My second point concerns something that arises out of reading between the lines of the report. Perhaps the Committee could not agree on the matter, but we need to review whether every police force has a special branch. It seems to me that the time for that has come. Some forces are small, some are very big, as the report notes. Only the Metropolitan force has special dedicated funds for its special branch. Other forces have to take account of the other pressures that they face. If the special branch forces do a special job, we need to allow them to do that job in a proper and guaranteed way.
	We may need to have a further debate to work out how regional special branch forces could be set up. Accountability is essential, but it is possible that regional assemblies will be set up in the north-east, north-west, Yorkshire and Humberside in the next five years. Perhaps regional special branch forces should be set up in those places first. We in London have a regional special branch, and regional government. I believe that the present regime, in which police forces have a special branch but no guaranteed funds for it, is beginning to fail the country.
	An interesting point was made about Foreign Office official advice. That advice is important; it is now up to date and adequately updated. However, as I have said to the Foreign Secretary, if we tell people that they should not visit countries because they are unsafe and there are civil disturbances and difficulties, it is inconsistent that such countries are placed on a white list and their citizens cannot be treated as necessarily having a prima facie case for leaving and seeking asylum elsewhere. We cannot have it both ways. If a country is not safe for us due to internal disorder, it cannot be safe for its own citizens either. We cannot continue that inconsistency.
	Lastly, on recruitment and retention, vacancies and training, it is worrying that, although we appear to have recruited most of the people we need, especially for difficult areas of the world, there are still gaps in intelligence in certain parts of the world, as the report highlights and as my hon. Friends have pointed out. If we are deficient in collecting, analysing and assessing intelligence from key areas of the world that are necessary for our national security, the resources needed to deliver that must be produced.
	Some of us argue that we may need to look again at the Government structures that deal with these and other matters. My plea is that we learn the lessons of this year, last year and previous years. If there is to be major restructuring of Government, let us not do it on the back of an envelope, driven by personalities and on the basis of three days of turmoil and a year of regret and recrimination. Let us do it in an orderly way: take evidence, proceed carefully and get it right. The intelligence and security services and the Departments that administer them deserve nothing less.

Julian Lewis: Hon. Members may be interested to know that when the Joint Intelligence Committee was founded in 1936, it was as a sub-committee of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, although even at that time—as in later years—it had a Foreign Office Chairman. In 1976, in the course of researching Chiefs of Staff Committee material, I came across a JIC document, which—if only, if only—might have been the research discovery of a lifetime. That document, a copy of which I have before me, was entitled, "Use of Special Intelligence by Official Historians", and had been lying undiscovered in the Public Record Office files for four years, having been inadvertently released with a mass of other material in 1972. It did nothing less than reveal the entire Ultra secret.
	The document explained that when official historians came to compare captured German documents with the timings of orders given to allied forces in our own records, they would come to the inescapable conclusion that this could have been done only as a result of our being able to read the enemy's ciphers. As a result, the following instructions were given to the head historians in the Cabinet Office and in each of the three service Ministries:
	"It is imperative that the fact that such intelligence was available should NEVER be disclosed—(a) even though European hostilities have now ceased"—
	the document was dated 20 July 1945—
	"(b) even after the conclusion of the far eastern war."
	The historians were instructed:
	"Not to probe too deeply into the reasons for apparently unaccountable operational orders being issued . . . To observe absolute and complete reticence concerning these matters even amongst themselves."
	They certainly did that.
	Why was that never quite the research discovery of a lifetime? Because two years earlier, in 1974—two years after the document had been inadvertently released to the PRO, but two years before I was lucky enough to discover it—F.W. Winterbotham blew the lid off the Ultra secret by publishing his book on that subject. So my little moment of glory as an academic historian was, in a sense, snuffed out before it even began.
	Churchill described the work of Bletchley Park as having been carried out by people whom he characterised as:
	"The geese that laid the golden eggs and never cackled."
	How things have changed. What we are concerned about now is not whether Alastair Campbell wins, or Andrew Gilligan wins, because the real losers of the present controversy will be the intelligence services themselves, given the damage that has been done to the ethos of the JIC.
	I took the trouble to use a bit of modern technology, called LexisNexis, which is a newspaper database that hon. Members can access through the Library. I did a little search for the words, "Joint Intelligence Committee", and I have to tell the House that, in the 10 years from 1982 to the beginning of 1992—which includes the first Gulf war—there were just 99 references to the JIC in British newspapers. Even in the 10 years from the beginning of 1992 to the beginning of 2002—which includes the events of 11 September—there were only 431 such references. However, in the 18 months from January 2002 until now—in that year and a half alone—there have been a massive 502 references, of which 347 were in the past six months. [Hon. Members: "What is your point?"] My point is that, as a result of the misbehaviour over the dodgy dossier, the JIC has become a matter of common currency and political controversy.
	I refer to a brief and apparently well-informed report in The Guardian on 1 July, which states:
	"Downing Street's determination to publish a dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction provoked serious divisions in the intelligence agencies, senior Whitehall officials disclosed yesterday . . . The trouble, say officials, is that No 10 wanted to use intelligence as a trump card for war."
	Worse than that is the report, published by the BBC on 6 June, which states that No. 10 sent back the weapons dossier to intelligence chiefs no fewer than six times for alteration. I quote from that report:
	"A source close to British intelligence has told BBC diplomatic correspondent Barnaby Mason that Downing Street returned draft versions of the dossier to the Joint Intelligence Committee 'six to eight times'. . . Responding to Barnaby Mason's report, Mr Blair's office again said no pressure had been put on the intelligence services to change the document."
	That is not saying, of course, that the document had not been sent back on that number of occasions.
	Indeed, on Friday 27 June, the Foreign Secretary stated in his evidence to the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs that Mr. Campbell was preparing
	"a detailed summary of the exchanges between him and the JIC—saying 'Can I suggest this? What about that?'—and the response from the JIC, which will give you, as it were, the most complete and accurate running commentary on that process."
	The idea that the JIC should have to bandy words with a professional propagandist, such as Alastair Campbell, about what should go into its reports is deeply subversive of the integrity of the intelligence services. It contrasts very clearly with the work of the information research department, which was set up by the Attlee Government and used during the cold war to put into the public domain information that could be used publicly, although it had been gathered from intelligence sources. The IRD gave that information to the Government and journalists for them to use without reference to the fact that it had come from the intelligence services in the first place. In other words, the information stood or fell on its own merits and on the reputation of the people who published it. I am afraid that the result of what has gone wrong with the undermining of the independence of the JIC is that nobody will believe the Prime Minister again when he cites intelligence sources; no one will trust him next time military action is needed; and it will become harder for the Opposition to take at face value Government assurances on intelligence matters in the future as we were content to do in the past. The Joint Intelligence Committee should have approved what facts could be used by the Government. The dossier or dossiers should have been published as the position of the Government. In my view, the name and the status of the Joint Intelligence Committee should not have been compromised by being referred to in these dossiers in any way, shape or form. When a secret intelligence service is treated in such a fashion, it is in danger of losing both secrecy and intelligence on one hand, and its ability to provide a service on the other.
	Whatever the answers were as to whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and as to whether the stocks that were made were destroyed, concealed or exported, they would more easily have been found had the proper steps been taken to secure secret documentation immediately after the fall of Saddam.
	In the brief time that I have left, I shall turn once again to the testimony of Ibrahim al-Marashi, the researcher, as I said in an earlier intervention, whose work was plagiarised in the second dossier—popularly known as the dodgy dossier. You will recall, Madam Deputy Speaker, that his testimony was that 90 per cent. of that second dossier came from his article, and from two other articles in Jane's Intelligence Review. On the question of documentation, he was asked by the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee:
	"Is it fair to say that the Iraqi regime was extremely meticulous in its bookkeeping?"
	In reply to that question—question 721 on page 51 of the uncorrected transcript—he stated:
	"Any incident, no matter how minuscule, was recorded in the Iraqi intelligence files. I will just give you an example. A solider deserted to Saudi Arabia. They even knew he had six bullets in the cartridge of his Kalashnikov rifle. This is how minutely Iraqi intelligence kept track of matters. If they could keep track of how many bullets are in a Kalashnikov rifle it is most likely that key documentation or evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programme or any other kind of programme or human rights abuses were documented in Iraq. It was a bureaucracy that kept a record of almost anything that was of any significance or insignificance in Iraq."
	I conclude by reminding the House once again what I stated in successive questions to the Foreign Secretary, the Defence Secretary and the Prime Minister. It is an appalling breach of competence, common sense and the normal arrangements made for any invading army that the coalition did not make it their top priority to go into the Iraqi intelligence headquarters and the Iraqi Foreign Ministry to get those documents that could have resolved these questions. We now know that 13 days after the fall of Baghdad those headquarters had still not been secured, and that the BBC, The Daily Telegraph and other reporters were going in and rifling through files that anybody could take away. That level of incompetence is totally incomprehensible. An intelligence objectives sub-committee should have been in place to ensure that those documents were targeted. If the Government are suffering now from their failure to find what they are seeking in Iraq, they have only their own incompetence to blame.

Oliver Letwin: In response to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis) just made, which has been coming at us throughout the debate in repeated ways, I want to add a brief observation before turning to the other issues that have concerned us. The point was at least heavily implied by the powerful contribution made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Mr. Portillo).
	We all await the outcome of the Intelligence and Security Committee's report on Iraq. We, and certainly I, have all been considerably reassured by the statements made by members of the Committee of all parties that they have no intention of allowing themselves to become an instrument of the Government to the remotest degree when producing the report. However, we know something now without having to await that report. We know that what the Prime Minister told the House about that infamous dossier was not correct. We know that he said that it was an intelligence document because Hansard shows that, and we know that it was, in great part, not that.
	We hope, and expect, that that was a case of the Prime Minister inadvertently misleading the House. A remedy is always available for a Minister who inadvertently misleads the House and the House will always generously accept it. Such a Minister may come to the House, apologise and explain. That is now necessary because it is of the utmost importance that it should be known that the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom takes seriously the question of whether Parliament has been correctly informed about a matter of vital national interest. I do not want to go any further, but that vital point will continue to be raised until the matter is resolved.
	I am grateful to hon. Members who expressed the concern felt in this country about events at Guantanamo bay, including my right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot), who made an extremely poignant speech, and Members of all parties—members of the Committee and others. I do not complain for a second that the Home Secretary was outside the Chamber for much of the debate because he has an enormous array of duties, but if he inspects Hansard later, he will read statements about Guantanamo bay that will worry him because he is concerned about the protection of rights, as I and other hon. Members have cause to know. I am sure that he will share the worries that were expressed today, and I hope that answers will be provided to the carefully judged and important questions that were asked about what is going on. If this debate stands as the moment at which the House first registered that concern, it will be of some historic significance.
	A third aspect that became apparent during the debate, which was expressed especially clearly in the important contribution made by my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Mr. Mates), was the value that the House attaches to the Committee's work—notwithstanding the trenchant critique made by the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay). We all recognise the significant constraints under which the Committee necessarily operates, and I take to heart the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire about not being too ready to poke fun at the asterisks. We all understand that it is inevitable that what the Committee may publish will be restricted to an extent.
	Perhaps the very existence of the Committee is its most important feature. The fact that the intelligence community knows that there is a serious group of people—they are chosen because they are serious Members of the House—to whom it has a responsibility to be rather open acts as the constraint that the House needs to exercise on it to ensure that, above all, it acts properly. It is a notable feature of this report and the two previous reports—the only three that I have had the pleasure to read—that there is no criticism of the propriety of the security and intelligence services' operation. I take it that one of the main reasons why there is no such criticism is that the services consider themselves to be accountable to the Government, the House and, above all, the Committee.
	I want to raise a matter that has not been mentioned, except in a glancing reference by the Chairman of the ISC, the right hon. Member for Dewsbury (Ann Taylor). I hope that the Committee will consider it in its succeeding deliberations. I must admit that everything that I am about to say is based on the profoundest ignorance. I cannot know that about which I am about to speak. Indeed, I do not want to know that about which I am about to speak. However, I hope that the Committee will put itself in a position where it can know and reassure itself about such matters.
	Let us assume that with the new joint terrorism analysis centre arrangements and the JIC, which is above it, the intelligence that will hereafter be gathered and analysed in relation to terrorism will be perfect. I do not assume that it can ever be perfect, but for the purposes of argument, let us assume it to be so. Nevertheless, the agencies will not fulfil the role that the Chairman, rightly, led us to believe is its most important—warning of and preventing events—unless something else occurs.
	The intelligence itself, and the perfect analysis of that intelligence, is useless by itself. If it sits in a file in Whitehall, nothing flows from it. If we are, as the head of the Security Service publicly warned us recently, likely to face an unconventional attack, it is critical that we know how to respond. The Home Secretary will complain that for the past 18 months, I have persistently rabbited on about the fact that I do not believe that our preparedness to contain and deal with the after-effects of such an attack is at a sufficiently high level. However, that is not my concern today.
	My point is that when the intelligence is amassed and analysed, it must be effectively conveyed to the people who are responsible for containment and protection thereafter. Those people are numerous. They include the many hospitals in the national health service; the many fire services around the country, which are the front line of containment and protection; the many police forces; and the ambulance services. A large number of people are involved in those services.
	I know, the Home Secretary knows, the Deputy Prime Minister knows and anyone who has either to shadow or to run any of the Departments that relate to those people knows, that the systems of communication within the services are highly imperfect. I do not level that as an accusation against this Government or previous Governments. The fact is that when one deals with hundreds of thousands of people, it is extraordinarily difficult to find near-perfect methods of communication.
	I do not know, and I do not want to know, what is happening, but I do want to know that the Committee knows what is going on and that it is sure that an adequate transmission mechanism is in place. When and where we find relatively detailed and specific intelligence about the possibility, above all, of an unconventional attack, I want to be sure that that information is conveyed in a useable and effective form—fast—to the places where it needs to be used to protect lives in this country.
	I hope that when we consider the report next year, we find that the Committee has investigated that enormously important subject. It alone has the capacity to do that. We clearly cannot allow the House to debate those matters openly. To know that there are gaps in the transmission mechanism and where they are would be an open invitation to terrorists. That is why only the Committee can investigate that matter. I hope that it takes on the task. If it does, it will earn the plaudits that it rightly gained this year and last year.

David Blunkett: I reiterate the thanks of and the comments made by hon. Friend the Minister for Europe, who has gone off to Gibraltar. He was standing in for my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, who I hope is a great deal better than he was at lunchtime.
	I, too, pay tribute to the Chair and members of the Intelligence and Security Committee, who have done another first-rate job. I thank everyone who has contributed to the debate. I only have a short time in which to reply to the many questions that have been raised. In thanking those in the intelligence and security services; those in the counter-terrorism branch and the police; those who have established the new Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, which we launched a couple of weeks ago; and those who have been working diligently behind the scenes, including those in the Cabinet Office, I want to make it clear in response to the remarks of the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin), that over the past two years we have been moving to a more joined-up system. That is why JTAC has been established. It is why lessons have been learned. It is why communication, as in the case of a committee that I chaired earlier this week, involves the police, the fire service, the ambulance service and those representing the nations and regions of Britain. It is why we need to ensure that as well as highly effective intelligence that is well analysed and properly assessed and disseminated, we also have in place measures that provide resilience. I am pleased to welcome the fact that my hon. Friend the Minister for Citizenship and Immigration will be assisting me on counter-terrorism and resilience issues. I am not entirely sure who the new shadow homeland security spokesman will be reporting to, but I welcome him as well and hope that he assists the shadow Home Secretary as effectively as my hon. Friend will assist me.
	Today, we have issued an updated statement building on the reports that I gave to Parliament on 3 and 20 March and the report on my visit to the United States on 2 April, all of which sought to reinforce not only the steps that we have been taking but communication to the public. We have today updated the website, which has already had about 326,000 hits, as they say, since we put it online in March. I hope that we shall be able to build on that effectively for the future, as we are doing with hard copy in libraries throughout Britain. That is to meet a point that has legitimately been made about access to the internet by those who do not have such facilities readily available to them.
	A number of Members, including the shadow Foreign Secretary, the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell) and the right hon. Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot), spoke about the Guantanamo bay prisoners. We take that issue extremely seriously. It is not my intention on behalf of my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary to make a detailed announcement this afternoon. However, it must be said that we have been making detailed and constant representations, that we are aware of the real concerns that exist and that we know that we must find a solution. In response to the right hon. Member for North-East Hampshire, it is important that we are establishing the basis of the continuing custody. It is not simply a matter of the Geneva convention; it is about whether the detainees form a particular category that would be covered by the Geneva convention, and there is a difference of opinion across the world between the United States and other countries. We need to be clear about that, but it is a serious issue.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) and the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) both raised the issue of border security, as did the shadow Home Secretary. We have received a report on the reorganisation of the special branch throughout the country that that involves the question of regionalisation, and that accountability will be important in that area. We know that we must get this right. However, there is a strong difference of opinion, including that between the police and others, as to whether a unified border control taking in special branch, immigration controls, Customs and Excise and those involved in the surveillance of our coastline, would be more or less effective. If I am convinced that it would be more effective, I will recommend to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister that we take that course. We are setting up a Cabinet Committee on organised crime, which I believe should have a hand in determining the recommendations of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. What we do not want to do is to disrupt existing activity, which is proving extremely effective, as has been demonstrated in recent months, in doing just that.
	I turn to what is probably the most contentious issue of the afternoon. I am not dismissing the points made by the right hon. Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Mr. Portillo). I accept that the controversy about the 45 minutes has dislocated the trust necessary right through the system. The way in which that has been delivered by one journalist on the basis of one supposed contact has made a difference to people's perceptions. We have been clear about that. We need to clear that up, and the two Committee reports will be crucial in doing so. I wish that the hon. Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames) had been here this afternoon, because at least he was honest enough in The Times this morning—and he used to be a Minister at the Ministry of Defence, instrumental, I would think, in these particular matters—that he believed absolutely what the head of MI6 said. I just wish that other people would believe the assurances. I give that assurance, on the behalf of Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head of the security service for which I am answerable to the Prime Minister.
	Let us be clear about what has been said this afternoon. An allegation has been made that the Prime Minister, in the words of the shadow Foreign Secretary, duped the House. An allegation has been made about the House being duped or misled—inadvertently or otherwise was added as an afterthought—on the basis of what was said in the Prime Minister's statement on 3 February. Much reference has been made to it, but little has been read out. On 3 February, the Prime Minister began a paragraph by talking about the issues of further intelligence over the previous days, and concluded:
	"In the dossier that we published last year,"—
	the September document—
	"and again in the material"—
	not the details of what the security services provided—
	"that was put out over the weekend,"—
	the so-called "dodgy dossier"—
	"it is very clear that a vast amount of concealment and deception is going on."—[Official Report, 3 February 2003; Vol. 399, c. 25.]
	It was. That was indeed going on in the September dossier—that is not being questioned— and was also going on in the material published or put out the weekend before the statement by the Prime Minister on 3 February. What is it in that paragraph in that statement of 3 February that so misled the House that it has taken the Opposition four weeks since spring bank holiday a month ago—that is when Andrew Gilligan made his allegation just before 7 o'clock in the morning on the "Today" programme—to decide that the Prime Minister had duped the House? They made a cause célèbre of it this afternoon because they wanted to stage a publicity stunt around our debate. I consider that a disgrace, and an affront to the House and to the intelligence of Members and to the Intelligence and Security Committee, which has done diligent work, and continues to do so, in getting to the truth and presenting it to the House and the nation.

Michael Ancram: The Home Secretary has accused us of only raising that this afternoon, but I have raised it in every interview that I have given since I heard evidence in the Foreign Affairs Committee where, for the first time, it was disclosed that that document was not an intelligence document. The fact that the right hon. Gentleman has not noticed that is, I am afraid, his fault—it is not my fault for not having raised it.

David Blunkett: There was no doubt whatsoever about the status of that document, which has been debated time and time again. It was questioned on 18 March when the House debated the issue of whether we should commit ourselves with the United States to conflict in Iraq, and it has been questioned over and over again. The sources were absolutely clear, and people have commented on that. I commented on it myself two months ago on the "Today" programme, so I am taking no lectures from the shadow Foreign Secretary about what he did, or did not, pick up from the Select Committee's investigation. There was a stunt this afternoon, and a pretty poor one at that.
	Let me turn briefly to the critical issue raised by the ISC. Intelligence is critical to our safety, and for 30 years we have relied on it to deal with attacks from Ireland. It is important that the intelligence services are able to look ahead, and not merely at the immediacy of firewalls and ensuring that we are protected at the moment. We need to take a long-term view, and we both need and rely on the intelligence services. They have done a first-rate job, and so has the ISC, and I commend its report to the House.

John Heppell: I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
	Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

PETITION
	 — 
	Community Pharmacies

Jonathan R Shaw: It is my pleasure to present a petition on behalf of 3,500 of my constituents, who have signed in Pydens pharmacies in Chatham, Larkfield and Snodland. I express my thanks to all the staff for their hard work, in particular Mr. Barrie Smith.
	The petition states:
	That local pharmacies should be preserved and their continued services to local communities safeguarded.
	The Petitioners therefore request that the Government reject proposals in the Office of Fair Trading report that would allow unrestricted opening of pharmacies able to dispense NHS prescriptions and replace them with proposals which will retain pharmacies at the heart of the local community, playing a key role in primary care services.
	To lie upon the Table

SCOTLAND OFFICE

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Heppell.]

Alex Salmond: I am delighted to have the opportunity to debate a current political mystery. It may not be as important or as mysterious as the dodgy dossier or other aspects of the Iraqi issue, but it is none the less a mystery that has been with us for the past two weeks—that is, the role, function and purpose of the Scotland Office. I welcome to the debate the Scottish and Welsh Members who have stayed behind for an Adjournment debate on a Thursday afternoon.
	I quite understand why the Secretary of State for Scotland cannot be with us. He has many other responsibilities. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Harris) says more important responsibilities. That is one of the points that we might want to develop during the debate. We welcome the fact that the Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Constitutional Affairs—[Interruption.] The hon. Lady adds to the confusion by saying the Scotland Office, but in the Government own publication released 10 days ago, the hon. Lady is designated an Under-Secretary in the Department for Constitutional Affairs. There is no mention whatever of the Scotland Office in the document.

Anne McGuire: To clarify the matter, the title of the Department is the Scotland Office, Department for Constitutional Affairs.

Alex Salmond: That certainly clears things up. This is the first time that I have heard the designation Scotland Office, Department for Constitutional Affairs. It did not appear in the official publication. The parliamentary Labour party helpfully released a list of Government members, where the Secretary of State for Scotland is listed as a Minister in the Department for Constitutional Affairs. I do not understand how a Cabinet Minister can be a Minister in another Department.
	I start the debate by speaking about the chaos, confusion and complete disarray of the Government as a result of the reshuffle effect in Scotland and Wales. I shall challenge the concept of a Scotland Office, citing in my support the current Secretary of State for Scotland in the Department for Constitutional Affairs, and then I shall suggest a way forward out of the morass that the Government have left us.
	In the reshuffle announcement of Thursday 12 June, there was no mention of the Scotland Office and the post of Secretary of State for Scotland continuing. The statement issued on 13 June by the Scottish Affairs Committee, which appeared in Hansard, stated that the Secretary of State for Scotland, the right hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling), the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, the hon. Member for Stirling (Mrs. McGuire) and Mr. David Crawley, Head of Department at the former Scotland Office would appear before the Committee.
	We were told by the Leader of the House and Secretary of State for Wales that that designation was the responsibility of House officials, but I know now for a fact that the House officials took the advice of an official in the Scotland Office in order to make it.
	Hon. Members should think about that. We are talking about a Government reshuffle affecting who has responsibility for Government Departments and the Ministers and Secretaries of State who carry those burdens of responsibility. It is not a small matter when a reshuffle takes place without even people in those Departments knowing the designation and responsibilities that they are meant to have. That is not a small matter and I think that it is unprecedented in Government reshuffles. I have already stated that we have two conflicting definitions of what has happened in terms of the official list of Her Majesty's Government and the parliamentary Labour party publication. I have heard a new version from the Under-Secretary in the past few minutes. All that I am saying is that there is a great deal of chaos and confusion, which is not helped by the Scotland Office homepage on the internet, which still states:
	"This site is currently under redevelopment."
	My impression of the reshuffle—it is no more than my impression, but I suspect that something like this happened—is that it was indeed the Prime Minister's intention to abolish the Scotland Office and the post of Secretary of State for Scotland. At some point on the day after the reshuffle, it was discovered that there was a parliamentary difficulty in the abolition of the post of Secretary of State for Wales, as it is named in the Government of Wales Act 1998 and the Secretary of State sits, ex officio, on the National Assembly for Wales. As a result, given the confusion that had already surrounded the attempted abolition of the post of Lord Chancellor, the Welsh Secretary was kept. Subsequently, we ended up with the retention of the Scottish Secretary.

Simon Thomas: Does my hon. Friend agree that the situation that he has outlined underlines the currently asymmetric nature of devolution in the United Kingdom? Wales and Scotland were treated in exactly the same way in the reshuffle, but the constitutional relationships and tax-varying and legislative powers in Wales and Scotland are very different. Surely, the only way in which the reshuffle could have worked, even by the Government's own standards, would have been if devolution had been advanced to Wales to at least the same level at which it is already available in Scotland.

Alex Salmond: I agree with my hon. Friend that the Government are now encountering some of the difficulties that were implicit in what they say was a devolution settlement, but what most of us would see as only an intermediate step in the process towards something all together more rational in Scotland and Wales.
	I was interested in the version of events given by the new Scotland Secretary when he eventually appeared before the Select Committee on Scottish Affairs on 17 June. It may surprise some hon. Members to hear that I agree with the tenor of the way in which the new Secretary of State approaches his post. In speaking about the problems that can arise and have occurred in the past in the operation of the Scotland Office post devolution, he said:
	"If you have to come through me, or Anne for that matter, then it just puts an extra barrier in the way and it is not necessary."
	He also said:
	"basically what I would like to move to is a situation basically where the two administrations work very closely together in partnership . . . I would like to get to a situation where, frankly, the ministers in the Scottish Executive and the ministers in the United Kingdom government talk to each other as colleagues . . . and they get on with it without us holding hands."
	In those statements, I think that the new Secretary of State for Scotland was pointing out in an acute way what had not been happening through his predecessor in the previous Scotland Office. A catalogue of blunders or mistakes occurred where the Scotland Office, instead of operating as a helping hand to the Scottish Executive, was an impediment to the contact that should have been taking place between Scottish Executive Ministers and Ministers of the Crown in this place. If we follow the logic of the Secretary of State's argument, we must accept that the best way to arrive at a sensible relationship is to cut out the unnecessary middle man—previously the middle woman—all together and put the responsibility where it should lie.
	My second point concerns a problem with the whole concept of the Scotland Office, whether it is a full-time or part-time office and whether it is in a Department or a Department on its own: it sits very uneasily in relation to what responsibilities it has and where they should lie in politics. The Scottish National party has published a dossier—Alastair Campbell has had nothing to do with the document, which is a genuine dossier of factual information—that shows the extent of the Scotland Office's failure and its inability to defend Scotland's interests on issues such as tourism, inward investment, trade promotion and hepatitis C compensation, and in many other ways.

Michael Connarty: All the issues in the hon. Gentleman's list appear to be devolved. I do not understand their relevance to this Parliament.

Alex Salmond: Then the hon. Gentleman has not been following Scottish affairs with his usual intimate knowledge. Take hepatitis C, for example. He should know that the Scottish Executive and the Scottish Parliament voted for compensation for hepatitis C sufferers, but that compensation is being blocked by the Westminster Department.
	I am glad that the hon. Gentleman made the point, however, because I am about to go on to give one detailed example from the list of how things are not working at present. What is happening, in my view, is that many UK Departments that still have residual responsibilities affecting Scotland are focusing on English responsibilities and treating themselves as English Departments. In December 2002, an interesting article by Jim and Margaret Cuthbert was published in the Fraser of Allander Institute paper. They examined the Department of Trade and Industry in enormous detail, looking particularly at the development of the knowledge economy, including the Innovation sub-programme, which is a £211 million reserved programme, and expenditure on research councils, which represents a £1.8 billion programme. They show that in relation to such UK responsibilities the DTI focuses on English expenditure, and conclude that the Link and Faraday programmes are not operating fully to the benefit of Scottish firms.
	I hope that that answers the hon. Gentleman's point, because I can give similar examples for each of the subject areas that I raised. UK Departments with residual Scottish responsibilities are not operating as UK Departments, and the Scotland Office in its previous manifestation did absolutely nothing to counterbalance how Scotland is losing out in those circumstances. If it could not work as a full-time Department with a full-time Secretary of State, how on earth is it expected to do that job as a part-time Department with a part-time Secretary of State? It is truly amazing. Having attended every Scotland questions since the last election, I am still unable to understand how the Department can have increased its staff from 73 in 1999 to a projected 130 full-time equivalents this year and nearly doubled its budget to accompany that increase in staff. What on earth have all those people been doing during that time? I agree with the new Secretary of State for Scotland that it is far better to charge Ministers in the Scottish Executive with the responsibility of representing Scottish interests by building the relationship with their UK counterparts and arguing their case directly, without having to go through—to use his word—the obstruction of a Scotland Office operating on a full-time or a part-time basis.

Tom Harris: Can the hon. Gentleman explain to the House how Scotland's interests can be better served by taking away Scotland's voice in the Cabinet, given that his preferred option of an independent Scotland is further away than ever because the majority of the Scottish electorate do not want independence? In view of the reality of the situation, how can he justify scrapping Scotland's voice in the Cabinet?

Alex Salmond: That is a bold statement from a member of a party that has just had its worst result in Scotland since 1931, at 34 per cent. of the vote. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman should not dwell too much on recent election results in Scotland.
	I am trying to detail, subject by subject, how the Scotland Office has failed to represent Scotland's interests. In each of the areas that I listed, which are UK responsibilities with residual Scottish responsibilities, the Scotland Office has failed to deliver. If the hon. Member for Falkirk, East (Mr. Connarty) or the Minister can detail one triumph of the Scotland Office in representing Scottish interests in the Cabinet over the years, I will be amazed. I represent a fishing constituency, and I should have thought that the recent fishing crisis in Scotland might be one matter on which a Cabinet Minister would have made a decisive intervention to represent Scottish interests, but the Minister concerned did absolutely zilch for the fishing communities of Scotland. The Scotland Office's failure to deliver shows either that there is something deeply wrong with the people who occupy those positions or there is something conceptually wrong with a Scotland Office that, in the Secretary of State's words, operates as a barrier to representing Scotland's interests.
	Scotland currently gets the worst of all worlds. Scotland and Wales appear to have privileged access, but in reality, have second-class service and status. The Observer is normally a balanced newspaper, and Andrew Rawnsley—journalist of the year—is usually an erudite commentator. However, 10 days ago, he wrote a piece that I can describe only as near racist. It was full of comments such as "whingeing in the hillsides from Scotland and Wales". He also believed that members of my party were arguing for retaining the Scotland Office; he got that bit wrong. However, the article shows the way in which even the most reasoned commentators can be led into an outpouring of bile because they believe that Scotland and Wales have privileged status and access. The reality, which the facts support, is that we suffer from second-class status and second-class government. I shall allow substantial time for the Under-Secretary to reply. There is much to explain about what is happening.

Russell Brown: The hon. Gentleman is approaching the close of his remarks. If my memory serves me correctly, he said at the beginning that he would provide some answers. Yet we are 15 minutes into his speech and I am waiting to hear some answers and about what his party would do.

Alex Salmond: The hon. Gentleman should pay closer attention. I said that I agreed with the argument that the Secretary of State for Scotland expressed in the Scottish Affairs Committee. He argued that, rather than have the Scotland Office as an obstacle to contact between Scottish Ministers and their United Kingdom equivalents, it should get out of the way. He wants to do that on a part-time basis, whereas I believe that if the logic applies to some issues, it applies to them all. Responsibility should be given to Scottish Ministers; that is where it should lie.
	The Scotland Office has been a failure as a full-time Office. I believe that it will also fail as a part-time Office. The clear and obvious solution to the devolution conundrum is to give the Scottish Parliament the financial power and authority to raise and spend revenue. We would then not have to hold such opaque debates about who is responsible for what.
	When the Under-Secretary replies, I am sure that she will answer some simple questions about what happens in the Scotland Office, which is part of the Department for Constitutional Affairs. If there is a policy disagreement between Lord Falconer and the new Secretary of State for Scotland, from whom do the civil servants take their guidance? Why did not Lord Falconer consult the Scottish legal Minister on the initiative on the constitutional court, which could impinge on the integrity of Scots law? Why is there no contact between Scottish Ministers and their counterparts in the UK? Why cannot Scotland have the normal status that is afforded to most nations and the self-respect and efficient government that comes from raising and spending one's own revenue?

Anne McGuire: The answer to the last question is that the Scottish people do not want that. First, I offer my formal congratulations to the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) on securing the debate. He does not often venture into the Adjournment zone—he has secured three Adjournment debates in the Parliament. It is therefore gratifying that he has been successful this evening. I believe that that is the last time in my remarks that I shall be nice to him.
	I was somewhat disappointed that, in spite of the fact that I had a preview of the hon. Gentleman's comments, he addressed the detail of very little. He highlighted some of the examples that he was allegedly going to raise and I shall deal with them shortly. However, we all know where the hon. Gentleman is coming from. Every comment made by him, his party and his colleagues from Wales is predicated on the simple fact that they do not accept the devolution settlement. His clear agenda is to divorce Scotland from the rest of the United Kingdom. He does not want a smart, successful Scotland within the UK; he wants Scotland to lose its seat at the top table, to lose its seat in Cabinet and to lose its seat at the heart of Government in the United Kingdom.
	Let us carry out a reality check. Let us see exactly what the hon. Gentleman wants. I admit he is an honourable man. He says that he wants
	"all of the powers held by London over Scotland . . . transferred to our democratic Scots Parliament in Edinburgh".
	That is the bottom line and the top line.
	I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me for reminding him that it was my party, along with the Liberal Democrats and other political parties and movements in Scotland, that delivered a Scottish Parliament to the people of Scotland, with their endorsement. Even when it came to what the hon. Gentleman describes as an incremental step, the Scottish National party could not take part in coalition-building, which continued for so many years. I note the presence of the hon. Member for Beckenham (Mrs. Lait) on the Opposition Front Bench. The only other group in Scotland that did not see the value of devolution at that time was, of course, the Conservative party.
	According to various analyses, there is very little support for independence in Scotland. From 1997 onwards, there has been increasing support for the option that is closest to the current devolution settlement—a Parliament in the United Kingdom with tax-raising powers.
	It would be foolish of me to say that the Government need not continue to play their part in explaining what devolution means to the people of Scotland—and, dare I say, to some of our colleagues south of the border. If that means speaking to journalists such as Andrew Rawnsley, perhaps the hon. Gentleman will join me in doing so. Such discussion is at the core of the Scotland Office's activity. I think that the Labour party is in tune with the Scottish people when it comes to the benefits of a devolved Scotland, and it is on that basis that we have developed a Scotland Office that works within the politics of devolution.
	As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State explained a few weeks ago, when giving evidence to the Select Committee on Scottish Affairs, now that devolution has bedded down successfully the time has come to encourage even more direct communication between Whitehall and the Scottish Executive. That is not a new development; it is a continuation of a process that has been going on since July 1999. It is a credit to all concerned that the transition between a centralised United Kingdom and a decentralised system in the UK has occurred so smoothly.

Alex Salmond: Will the Minister give way?

Anne McGuire: Not at this point. I am about to reveal the rest of what the Secretary of State said to the Select Committee. This is the bit that the hon. Gentleman did not reveal to the House.
	My right hon. Friend said
	"they speak to each other. If you have to come through me, or Anne for that matter, then it just puts an extra barrier in the way and it is not necessary."
	That was building on the good relationship that we had established. My right hon. Friend continued
	"What is necessary is to make sure that, were that relationship not to be working or, as can sometimes happen, and I see this across Whitehall never mind Scotland and the United Kingdom where you get two departments where officials for one reason or another are not working with each other, it sometimes needs . . . intervention to make it happen. That is why it is important to get the Scotland Office there."
	That is what the Secretary of State said—not the truncated version given by the hon. Gentleman.

Alex Salmond: Another dodgy dossier.

Anne McGuire: Probably the only dodgy dossier that is floating around Whitehall is the one that was not revealed by the hon. Gentleman this evening, but was previewed in his press statement on the debate. [Interruption.] Flattery will get you nowhere. I am not taking an intervention at this point.
	The hon. Gentleman quickly flicked over some of the issues that he told the press he intended to raise this evening, one of which was tourism.

Alex Salmond: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I know that the Under-Secretary may be confused about what Department she is in, but in any Department, when a Minister is replying to an Adjournment debate, it is the normal courtesy to give way to the hon. Member who sought that debate. I think that it is unprecedented for that not to happen.

Madam Deputy Speaker: That really is a matter for the individual Minister concerned.

Anne McGuire: With the greatest respect to the hon. Gentleman, I did say "at this point", and we still have five minutes to go.
	As my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk, East (Mr. Connarty) has said, tourism is a devolved matter. One of the charges that I expect to see when the dossier is eventually published—we were promised it before this evening—is that Scottish interests were not represented at the tourism summit. I do not see how that can be an issue for the Scotland Office. If tourism is devolved, responsibility for representing Scotland at tourism summits must fall to the devolved Administration, and Alasdair Morrison, the then Deputy Minister for the Highlands and Islands and Gaelic, attended the inaugural summit in 2000, and both Elaine Murray MSP and Mike Watson MSP were involved in the tourism summit in 2002, representing Scotland's interests.
	The hon. Gentleman also referred to trade and the Department of Trade and Industry. Certain aspects of trade are also devolved.
	I will now, generously, give way to the hon. Gentleman.

Alex Salmond: The Under-Secretary has just admitted that there was no one representing Scotland at the 2001 tourism summit, which was the point I was making.
	The Government are meant to have concordats for exchanging information. "Prior notification" is meant to be given to the Scottish Executive of changes in UK policy that affect them. Why, then, was there no prior notification of the changes in the constitutional court, and the substantial implications that they will have for Scots law?

Anne McGuire: Both the Lord Advocate and the Lord Chancellor have said that these issues are matters for consultation. The Scottish Executive and the First Minister yesterday robustly rebutted some of the ludicrous charges floating around about the Prime Minister having to engage with the First Minister every time there happened to be a change in his Cabinet. Indeed, the First Minister firmly stated that if the charge was the other way round—that the First Minister had to speak to the Prime Minister every time he wanted to make a change in his ministerial teams—people such as the hon. Gentleman would be up in arms, saying that Westminster was attempting to make Scotland toe a line that it did not want.
	The hon. Gentleman protests too much. There is still a need to have a Scottish Secretary in the Cabinet, and most hon. Members—certainly those from parties with Scottish interests—would agree. That is certainly the case with the Conservative party, and I understand that even Liberal Democrat spokespersons have accepted that the way in which we have adjusted the work load of the Scotland Office is the correct way forward in the light of the devolutionary settlement. The only ones ploughing this very narrow furrow are SNP Members—although tonight they clearly have the assistance of their Welsh colleagues.
	Time is winding on, and I just want to say a couple of things by way of conclusion. Earlier this week, all manner of statements were made about the Scotland Office not delivering. According to certain press reports—including in the local press of the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan—the Scotland Office is a dead parrot, but there are no dead parrots in our Department. All that we get from the Scottish nationalists is spam, spam and more spam; that is the sort of Monty Pythonesque world they want us to live in. For most people in Scotland, the devolution settlement has delivered. It has delivered for the thousands of people in the hon. Gentleman's own constituency who are getting the winter fuel allowance and the working families tax credit, and it has delivered for those now in work who did not have jobs in 1997.
	Let me set the record straight once and for all: the Scotland Office continues to function as part of the new Department for Constitutional Affairs. Its essential work continues in advocating Scotland's interests in the Cabinet, as does the role of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland. Quiet, careful work is going on behind the scenes that does not often grab the headlines. I know that the hon. Gentleman likes to judge events in terms of how many headlines he can get, but I suspect that the real reason for this debate is not that the Scotland Office is as dead as a dead parrot, but that the hon. Gentleman is a sick as a parrot because devolution is working.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes to Seven o'clock.